


I'll Kill You Myself, or: What Not To Swear

by seizethefire



Series: Faith and the Lack Thereof [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Dancing, Gen, Guns, M/M, Prayer, Shapeshifting, Spoilers for Hammer of the Gods, Torture, Wings, armies should work differently than families, baby angels - or at least sort of baby gabriel anyway, but sometimes crying doesn't make anything better, crying can be super cathartic guys, deteriorating mental health, gabriel needs to stop pretending to die, lucifer hasn't fallen yet but no worries he'll get there, metaphors abound, really bad nicknames, storytelling time, sword fights, the beach, the fall of lucifer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-10
Updated: 2012-09-28
Packaged: 2017-11-13 22:38:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 32,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/508483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seizethefire/pseuds/seizethefire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some promises should never be broken but are; some promises ought to be broken but aren't. It's no surprise that Lucifer's promises are like that.</p>
<p>These are four times in Lucifer's life. It's a long one, and it's a violent one, and it's a sad one. Of course, he was happy once -- and then Gabriel was made, and it all went downhill from there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Heaven: Appearances Deceive, or: A Joke In Poor Taste

**Author's Note:**

> I intended this be a short companion to the previous, Raphael-centric piece, but then it turned itself into a monster and is forcing me to write a whole 'verse. Anyway, enjoy; if you do, please tell me about it.
> 
> Also, disclaimer, I do not own anything you recognize. Supernatural is the property of Eric Kripke/The CW/The WB.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which routines are upset by Gabriel's unfunny humor.

They've been sent out as a scouting party.

 

It's Lucifer, Gabriel, Iaoth, Hofniel, and Akzariel. They left Heaven wearing soldiers two weeks ago. This is just a routine expedition; they aren't at war, they're just watching over these misled creatures who are causing harm, and it is always a good idea to be fully informed about possible battles. They had orders not to engage the enemy in combat, but honestly, Lucifer has no idea why this party was chosen if not to fight. Because, well, (A) him. (B) Gabriel gets in so many ridiculous fights it's actually not funny, it's dangerous. (C) Really? Choosing angels who thwart creatures of darkness, fight for their father, and repel evil spirits? What kind of scouting party is this? Who planned this? (Michael did, of course, and Michael must know none of them will be happy if they don't get to fight something. They are soldiers, they're wearing soldiers, what is the point of a sword if you use it to stir the coals in your fireplace and not to behead your enemies?)

 

Rather typically their amazingly stealthy and pacifistic scouting party ran afoul of some unpleasant folks. Between running away in fright and defying his orders, Lucifer is comfortable beating the shit out of creepy walking giant four-legged scorpion-esque things. He barks an order and the five angels wade into battle. (At first they run, actually, but pretty soon it's literal wading through corpses and blood. He regrets not packing good rainboots. This is exactly the kind of situation you find only when you aren't prepared to do so.)

 

Some time in, he's lost sight of the others, but they'll be fine. Right now he has sentient non-arachnid ass to kick (if it were arachnid he would have more fun kicking it, but this is a not-horse whose mouth Lucifer isn't checking; the thing probably bites). It's a wonderful way to start the day. He's killed four so far, and he's working on number five.

 

Lucifer's falcata slams down heavily into a not-shoulder (it would be a shoulder on a mammalian creature). The thing shrieks and twists, trying to free itself, but the sword is built like an axe and the thing's carapace is segmented like armor, and together it's like a terrier's teeth in an unfortunate cat. The thing only manages to force the falcata to burrow further into itself. Lucifer takes the initiative and shoves down and right towards its neck, and suddenly there's a lot less resistance on the blade, and the thing jerks and drops all its weight onto his sword. It's clearly dead. He must have cut something vital.

 

He yanks the sword out of its body, kicking it down and away, pivoting to look for his next opponent; the ambush has gone on long enough that enemies are becoming thin on the ground. He spies a good prospect maybe five meters away, trying to leave the skirmish unseen. He's heading over to disabuse the coward of that notion when he hears it.

 

A scream of pain jumps out above the crowd of noise. Lucifer spins to locate the sound; his eyes catch Gabriel falling to the ground, a spiny-tailed _thing_ stepping away triumphantly.

 

Lucifer's heart (he doesn't have one) stops.

 

He launches himself at the thing, sword forgotten and absorbed, tearing at its smooth carapace with clawed limbs. He rips and rends the thing into chunks that decorate his feet and the ground around them. When he can feel organ squishing between his fingers he yanks. The pink fiddly bit inside stains his skin.

 

Then the thing is well and truly dead. Lucifer hopes it rots in its afterworld. He spins to see what he can do for Gabriel. Gabriel's gone. Lucifer's entire body is burning ice.

 

“Gabe,” he barks. “Gabriel, where are you!”

 

“Right here, bro,” a laughing voice calls from somewhere in the vicinity of his wing (would be, except right now he's got a body on, attractively and surprisingly smoothly dark haired).

 

Lucifer whirls. Gabriel, whole, hale, hearty, is standing in front of him now. The bastard is pouting.

 

“What'd you do that for?” Gabriel whines. “I was gonna pop up and be all like, 'In your face, extraterrestrial arthropod, you'll need to get up earlier than that to hoodwink an archangel!'”

 

Sometimes Lucifer wonders if Gabriel tries to sound as stupid as he does.

 

“What?” Gabriel says, whine gone. “What's wrong? You look pissed.”

 

Lucifer stalks forward.

 

“Oh, did you see my little trick?” Gabriel asks. “Wasn't it a great set up?”

 

Lucifer raises both arms in threat, but without his sword it's not very scary.

 

“Bro?” Gabriel questions, hands raising palm-out in a gesture of appeasement. “Did you not like the whole fake mortal injury thing?”

 

Lucifer catches Gabriel in an engulf. He surrounds the stupid, foolish, idiotic little jerk in his arms and his wings and his light, holding his dumb baby brother tighter than ever before.

 

“I swear, Gabe, if you _ever_ do that again – ”

 

Gabriel laughs and cuts him off. “I know, I know, you'll kill me yourself. Like I've never heard that one before, Luce.”

 

Lucifer just wraps closer. Whatever Gabriel's heard, Lucifer doubts Gabriel gets that Lucifer is serious. He's never been more furious in his life. After the freezing terror of never seeing his brother again he was thrown face to face with the looming abyss of powerlessness. He couldn't do anything useful, anything at all, he couldn't control what happened. Lucifer has never before understood just how much he needs to be in control.

 

While Gabriel was busy turning Lucifer's hair white, the rest of the party have finished off the few things left alive (they don't need any hostages, either for interrogation or ransom; they got enough info from their spying before the ambush). Hofniel is building a pyre while Iaoth heals a nasty green-edged cut on Akzariel's left leg. Lucifer joins the younger angels in collecting the various and sundry body parts that remain scattered around; they make a pyramid of severed limbs that puts Lucifer in mind of sacrificial rituals (many polytheistic religions will have them, and so too does the worship of his father for a while; they are not above having dark pasts, whatever Michael says). When Gabriel lights it up, the flames are purple and crackle loudly. They smell bitter like squished insects.

 

Lucifer waits patiently until the fire dies down completely before he gives the order to move out. They could all use the chance to self-asses for injuries, and he enjoys watching the fire bloom over the dead things and then die itself. But then the flames are well and truly gone, and he scatters the ash and remaining charred carapace with a wave of his will. There's still evidence of the fight if anyone bothers to look, but he doesn't really care. He has more important things to worry about than these.

 

“We are returning home,” he announces. “That was beyond our orders. Akzariel, are you alright to move on that leg?”

 

“Yes, brother,” Akzariel promises, nodding. Lucifer sees the wince when he rises, but Lucifer will take Akzariel at his word. Trust is important and if Akzariel is lying it will be to his own detriment.

 

“Then let us go,” Lucifer responds, and immediately turns away and launches himself up into the sky.

 

On the journey back to Heaven Lucifer has plenty of time to think. Which is great, but also terrible, because he has just realized that he cares more about control than siblings. He has problems, clearly. That isn't okay. He isn't okay.

 

What kind of brother sees a brother fall and skips through terror to fury at his own powerlessness? What kind of brother is angry, so angry, to see a brother alive and well after he thought him gone?

 

Because Lucifer _is_ angry. He's beyond enraged. How could Gabriel do that to him? How dare Gabriel?

 

He ignores the side (the rational, forgiving (too gentle) side) of his being that points out it wasn't just a joke Gabriel played in bad taste, it was a tactical maneuver (what kind of archangel needs to use tactics like that? How bad is Gabriel with a sword?). Gabriel hadn't meant him or the others to see it, it wasn't a show, it was to confuse that one enemy Lucifer had shredded.

 

Lucifer is angry that Gabriel would use plans like that. He is angry that he was forced to watch (believe) a brother's death. He is angry that Gabriel is fine and let Lucifer think he wasn't. Gabriel's deception is the worst part of this. Lucifer can't look over his shoulder at his younger brother, because if he does he'll start bellowing.

 

Oh, the fury will fade, he knows. If Lucifer can just have enough time away from Gabriel to cool down (and if he weren't in a vessel right now that would be beautifully literal, Lucifer would be burning his anger away as the star he is called), Lucifer won't do anything he might regret later. He needs to cleanse himself of this rage like a dark haze over his eyes. It's not healthy to stay like this for long.

 

They arrive back in Heaven without the usual fanfare he and Gabriel get, but the fanfare would have been totally unnecessary, Lucifer sees, because Raphael has some strange sixth sense about when he's needed. As they alight, vessels shed in the flight (sort of; actually doing so would leave the bodies to fall down to earth, and the impact of a human body hitting the ground while moving at its terminal velocity isn't pretty), Raphael hurries over to Akzariel. Iaoth happily relinquishes their brother. (Lucifer has been ignoring how Iaoth was half-carrying Akzariel, because he wouldn't have been able to fix the leg, because Akzariel would be shamed at his superior's knowledge of his weakness, and because if Akzariel was so proud he lied to Lucifer about the leg the idiot deserves that pain.)

 

Michael is drawn over by the fuss. 'He – ' he begins, stops, glances away, wings shuffling. 'Lucifer,' he restarts.

 

'Michael,' Lucifer replies.

 

He has only recently changed his name. For so very long he was called Helel, and Helel was who he was, and Helel was his being. He grew tired of that moniker and that angel, and so altered himself in altering his name. It has never before been attempted – they were named by their father, and refuting that was thought to be a grave insult (literally; Michael expected him to be struck down). Yet Lucifer has suffered no ill consequences. If his father disapproved, he would have said something by now.

 

'How was your scouting expedition?' Michael inquires.

 

'We had two weeks of good intelligence gathering,' Lucifer says, twisting his eyebrows and wings in displeasure, offering up a report he's just willed into being (Michael insists on keeping track of everything with the correct documentation). 'Then we had an encounter with hostile personages.'

 

'You were not to engage,' Michael sighs. He's trying to frown but it's not working well. The report makes him happy to see Lucifer remember.

 

'We wouldn't have, but they wanted to eat Hofniel's face, and that was just rude,' Lucifer retorts. This is a bit of an exaggeration, but it gets his point across.

 

Michael's nose twitches in his attempt not to laugh. Lucifer gives him a shark-wide grin and raises both eyebrows (he doesn't have eyebrows). It's almost lewd. Michael loses the game and snorts, wings shifting to tangle with Lucifer's. Lucifer completes the practiced embrace, leaning in to breathe Michael's neck.

 

Most of his anger and upset rushes out with his exhalation. Michael fixes it, Michael always fixes it. Lucifer relaxes into his brother, his reflection, the other half of his life that shouldn't really be separate. (They aren't twins, and they aren't lovers, but Michael and Lucifer are nevertheless two halves of a whole that was somehow split, and each connection reforges them as one.)

 

Michael can tell he was upset. Lucifer knows because Michael's wings shudder into a comforting two-textured mix, downy and soft inners, like what warm clouds look like they should feel, and granite-hard, sword-sharp outers, a bastion of destructive power. It's a promise of comfort and love, protection and support.

 

Michael hasn't asked, but Lucifer volunteers the information anyway. 'Gabe,' he murmurs.

 

Michael waits.

 

'Stupid trick,' Lucifer whispers. 'Played it on an enemy.'

 

Michael is very patient when he needs to be.

 

'Let the thing think it'd got him,' Lucifer whimpers. 'Dropped. Saw it. Didn't mean me to.'

 

Michael tightens the embrace, breathing out, a long controlled hiss that tells Lucifer Michael is no happier than he was at the time. Lucifer concentrates on the way the Michael smells like home.

 

Eventually Lucifer shifts his head against Michael's collarbone, and Michael noses Lucifer's hair (today it's golden curls, but in the same way that they don't really have wings they don't have hair; Lucifer likes hair, he looks better with hair than without, so he has hair). They smile as they unwrap and turn to face their younger siblings.

 

This homecoming greeting is so common that Gabriel, Hofniel, and Iaoth are waiting patiently. Raphael is fussing over the bandage on Akzariel's leg, but with a scolding air, so Lucifer knows Akzariel is fine. Raphael is calm, cool, relaxed and encouraging, when he's worried about a patient. When they're okay, he's irritated they got themselves hurt.

 

Gabriel smirks at his older brothers. It fades when Michael glowers at him. 'I heard what you did,' Michael snaps. 'Don't you look at me like that.'

 

'It was just a joke!' Gabriel whines, but as Michael's glare gets fiercer, he stops and shifts into a more professional stance. Wings folded, shoulders braced, legs slightly apart, hands folded behind his back, gaze straight ahead. The color of his wings (cheerful, rough-and-ready yellow gold that hasn't been polished for too long, so long that it's actually tarnishing like silver, gold doesn't tarnish like that) leeches away, leaving them plain white feathers.

 

The sight bothers Lucifer on some level – that isn't Gabriel. That isn't who Gabriel is.

 

Michael shares Lucifer's momentary discomfort, Lucifer knows, but they know too that Gabriel should be ashamed of behaving like that. It isn't acceptable from an archangel.

 

'Do not pretend to die to confuse your enemy,' Michael lectures. 'It is dishonorable and moreover will endanger those flying with you. The sight will disrupt their concentration and draw them away from their own fights.'

 

'Yes,' Gabriel says. His eyes are golden and shining.

 

'Yes what?' Michael questions.

 

'Yes, commander, I will not pretend to die,' Gabriel says. His eyes are empty, blankly, blue.

 

'Good.' Michael nods in approval. He looks at the rest of the scouting party. 'I have the report. You are dismissed.'

 

Hofniel and Iaoth scatter. Raphael berates Akzariel for a few minutes more before they depart, Raphael heading away to the training grounds and Akzariel waiting to see Raphael's destination before going the opposite way.

 

Gabriel doesn't look at Michael or Lucifer. He launches up, spiraling away from his siblings. He isn't headed towards his bower, that Lucifer can tell, but he's guessing Gabriel wants to be alone. Lucifer certainly won't be following him right now. He's going to spend time with Michael. Later, when he has calmed down again, Lucifer will seek out Gabriel and reaffirm their bond, but now he will reassure himself of his bond with his elder brother.

 

Michael and Lucifer turn to each other. Michael reaches a hand and Lucifer catches it up, tugging his brother playfully into the air.

 

'Let me show you something,' Lucifer offers.

 

Michael smiles. 'Something new?'

 

'Of course,' Lucifer grins back, and Michael follows where he leads out into space.

 

Lucifer wants to see a star be born; he knows just the place to watch the light from farther out gather so they can view everything, from collapsing dust and gas to protostar to blazing white hypergiant, and then slowly to draw into itself further and further until it eats itself and the universe gains a black hole. He'd like to see it and share it with Michael.

 

Michael trusts Lucifer to always have something new to show him. Lucifer has never let him down in the past. They fly together into the sky, heading out to see Lucifer's surprise, laughing and singing in joy of proximity. As they go, they pass stars of every which size and color, twinkling in the dark.

 

Lucifer likes stars. He likes seeing them form and collapse. He especially enjoys dancing with them in the prime of their lives – the blaze is such a beautiful burn all around him.


	2. Hell: Tortured Moments, or: That Time He Almost Prayed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein Lucifer's cage isn't gilded at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I should warn for violence/gore/torture (psychological and physical). I can't personally tell how much gore or psychological torture will bother someone -- so just so you know, it's there. It's very much there.

All around him is a burning ring. It is a flaming lake of pain, where each flinch away drags him down and displaces a proportionate quantity of fire. The slosh and roll of the waves is a crackle, a snap, a pop and hiss and flicker and swirl of sparks. He paddles, kicks, bobs, struggles to keep his face above the fireline. He is not a very good swimmer, and the density of this distorted water would throw off the best. He goes under and thrashes his way up; he coughs and gasps for air and his demanding lungs launch open his mouth and nose to draw down oxygen, he needs it so much (he doesn't need to breathe), but all they pull in is flame. It roars down his nasal cavity, bellows through his mouth, and storms down his trachea. He can feel it spread out like vengeful wings within his chest, scorching through his primary, secondary, tertiary bronchi, budding into the bronchioles, pooling in the alveoli like liquid in the torso of a man coughing wetly with pneumonia. He melts in the heat and reforms while he does; he is incinerated to dry ash while he regrows organs, cell by cell.

 

-

 

All around him is frozen icy tundra. He is trapped in the center of concentric rings of solid water. Only the upper half of his being sticks out above, and he wishes each minute that it did not (he is thankful beyond thanks that it does). He is in the middle of the inverted cone of levels of Hell; he is in the Pit. He can hear the tortured souls around him of those who betrayed, their lord or friends or country or family, and they cry out uselessly. Those who can speak moan, shriek, whine senselessly their pain aloud. It grates on his ears. He cries at the sounds and he flaps frantically each second to fight his way out if he can, but it's useless. Nothing he does loosens any of the ice. His toes die, over and over and over, frostbite and hypothermia causing necrosis that spreads into gangrene, and he is so delighted to be unable to see through the ice (he wishes he couldn't see through the ice but he can because he doesn't have eyes really and even if he did they wouldn't just work like human eyeballs).

 

-

 

All around him is the Cage. The bars and the mesh are too hot, sun-warmed; they are too cold, wind-chilled. The Cage is too small for him. He is pressed up against it in all directions. His flesh (he is not a being of flesh) fights to squeeze out at each opening between the constriction. He can't move. At each bar-mesh juncture the uneven solder over the joint cuts at him. (It's lucky the Cage isn't really made of metal, because if it were the edges would be sharp and they would slice him up all over.) There's no one around. The Cage is all by itself in the dark and the cold. It's not like night – there's no moon and no prospect of rising sun. It's not like space – there's no bright burning stars hurtling away, expanding into newly extant empty places around the edge of the universe.

 

-

 

The Cage is too big for him. It's not for his body that it was made; he doesn't exactly have a body. It's big and cold and quiet. He is so alone. Never before has he been unable to reach his siblings … even when he chose to be alone that was a choice that he made, and he could always choose to end his solitude. He couldn't end a thing trapped in here, not even himself if he were to try. He's thought of it, certainly, wouldn't it be an end to his suffering? Who can say they have suffered as he has? Who else deserves to be freed from torment as much as he does? He thinks the emptiness of his prison is a torture all its own; at first he gloried that he could stretch his wings, what kind of prison was this, it was practically homey – then he had missed the company of companions. He had comforted himself; his siblings were either idiotically misled or ridiculously devoted; humans were beneath his notice; the evolving demons were less even than humans; the pagans could just rot for all he cared; he was well shot of them. Besides he had himself and that was all he wanted. Then he realized that he had grown tired of his own company. Then he began to stop thinking of his name, which could not really be called his own, when the only ones to use it were false worshippers at a false idol and non-believers scaring their children to eat their vegetables, and when he loathed it with all of his being. But he doesn't change it. He just doesn't use it. Who would know if he did, in this gaping confination?

 

-

 

It is an agony. An affliction. His pain is above what he could have dreamed (he's never had dreams) or screamed upon waking from terror in the night. Oh, but he does scream. He screams often, which is hard and hurtful, as he's never had a tongue of his own but his tongue has been ripped out, and it's not easy to scream without a tongue (or a larynx, jaw, lips, pharynx, nasal cavity, oral cavity, palate, esophagus, or epiglottis). He wonders sometimes if those who hear him even know what it is they hear. He wouldn't know it to be his own scream if he heard it from afar. Does it still count as a scream when wounded animals can't make noises so plaintive?

 

-

 

The ache is steady and unyielding. Each second pains him just to exist, and each movement he tries and fails to make stabs him with torment. He would call it needles of misery, but it's really too large and wide and sharp to be needles, it's more like being impaled by a railroad spike or a branding iron or a double-bladed war axe. Of course he should be clear: he doesn't mean stabbed straight through like a knight might skewer a boar, he means _impaled_ , like how Vlad the Impaler supposedly will have fun decorating his castle's battlements. (He knows a lot about what will happen. It's a gift.)

 

-

 

The ache is an inconstant harmonic swell and fade, the ocean's tides but poorly timed, now terrible, now bearable, now rising, now itching, now peaking agony – the only constant about it is that it is never gone. Except for those few brief moments within which he lives a thousand lives where nothing at all hurts. And then the torment is fully mental, knowing that it will not last, that the pain will come again, and fearing when, how bad, will it hurt again now, now, is it time, can he have a moment more of peace joy freedom – no, he cannot, his body contorts to relieve the stabs and fails to alleviate anything.

 

-

 

If he had wings like birds have wings, he could tell terrible tales of the treatment of those wings. He doesn't, of course, but if he were to tell those tales nonetheless he would speak of having all the feathers singed away, of having the flight feathers plucked out and of being thrown from the nest, of breaking the humerus, the radius, the ulna, on both sides, and pushing the broken bones until they broke the skin. He would say his wings had been stretched out, pulled and laid flat for perusal, leaving him a sentient display case exhibit in a sickening zoo. He would say his wings had been dyed different colors with reactive acids and splashed with ammonia bleach to clean them after. He would say his wings had been pressed up into his body as close as they could be folded, until the squash made him writhe to stretch them, limbs falling asleep, tingling first and then painfully, then horrible spreading numbness, and finally an odd dirty sensation spreading through his veins that might be old blood coagulated and clotted and then putrefied. He would say that once the coverts had been removed, torn out in sections as small as could be made (barb by barb, at first, and then the afterfeather when the vane was bare, and the calamus snapped, bent, twisted like the knots in rope ladders), and he had been given a pillow filled with them. The pillow had been musty and less forgiving than the stone the Cage rested on.

 

-

 

If he had the body of a human – he doesn't – he would whisper songs of upset over the usage of that body. He would hiss about fingernails removed, skinned ears, pores filled with hot oil. He would bemoan the shattered joints and splintered ligaments, and the tendon he had seen made into floss. He would say, of course they covered all the usual things – every bone was broken, every inch of skin was flayed from his living body, his organs were removed, his eyeballs were plucked out, his tongue was sheared with scissors, the space under his fingernails was reduced with splinters of wood and bamboo, hot iron brands were poked in tender places, he was starved, he was dehydrated, he was forced to stay awake for days, he was stabbed, he was beaten with clubs, he was kicked fiercely until his ribs fell apart into a million tiny bone shards that turned his lungs to soup, his hair was torn from his body, his limbs were pulled apart on the rack, he was drawn, he was quartered, he was hung, he was guillotined, he was poisoned, he choked on a fishbone, he was drowned, he was held in highly pressurized environments until he was flattened into a smear on the ground, he was exposed to vacuum and the blood boiled in his veins, his heart was pulled from his chest whole, molten lead was poured down his throat, his brain was eaten in his skull, his mouth was sewn shut, his teeth were pulled out with pliers, his jaw was cracked with a mallet, his femur was snapped when he landed on the ground from a hundred feet up, his fingers were stolen joint by joint with a rusty knife, he was disemboweled with a wooden spoon, he was covered in uncountable tiny lacerations that bled like fury, he was tied up in ropes and then the ropes were pulled away to burn his entire body, he was covered head to toe in hot wax, his knees were dislocated, and his spine was straightened and contorted until it had to be pulled out of his back like a rope through his collarbone. The usual, of course, they covered, he would say, and sometimes they got creative.

 

-

 

Sometimes he sees things in the dark. Beyond the mouth of the cave where he's chained to the wall. The walls of the cave always show him things he doesn't want to see, debilitatingly happy cave paintings that flicker and change in the meagre firelight. He always sees a brother prosper without him, a sister dance for delight in his absence, a sibling bring great pride to their family with him gone. The sheer pleasant uniformity makes him choke and splutter because that cannot be true, because they are alive (they _must_ be alive) and to live is to suffer – he knows no greater truth than that.

 

(How dare they be happy without him? He is so lonely and they clearly don't care, they don't even think of him, he can tell, he's so damn jealous! He wants that, he wants them to miss him, he misses them, he'll show them all, they'll see that he was worth loving, they never appreciated him and that was all he ever wanted, he deserved it, he had been better than any of them save one.)

 

But sometimes outside the cave, in the emptiness of the unknown, eyes walk around and the luminescent trails they inscribe on the underside of his eyelids write a story of the painful coming tragedy he has abandoned his siblings to. Caused, really. He's heard that without him the coming destruction wouldn't have happened, but then he's also heard that his father planned for him to be as he was (is) and that it's all part of the plan, but also that he is the one flaw in his father's otherwise perfect workmanship, and his flaw is what will bring down this whole house of cards. None of that makes any sense at all to him. Nothing makes sense to him anymore, actually, overarching religious destiny aside, he doesn't comprehend how to brush hair or what is is to hear music. He isn't sure which way is up or what a Tuesday is; he's heard of laughter but thinks it might be the fleshy underside of a deformed fig; his ears play tricks, his eyes lie, his fingertips have no sensation left in them (the shackles cut off the circulation in the first week). He thinks he's going mad.

 

-

 

He deserves this. He knows that. He'd feel it in his soul if he had one; he doesn't. He does have his Grace, and there's that, but to be blessed with a soul is far better than to be assigned a Grace. He should have prostrated himself at the feet of the clay-born creatures his Father made. He had served so faithfully in the past and it was a personal tragedy that he could not continue to serve with obedience as his Father desired most rightfully. This is all his fault; the blame for this rests upon his undeserving shoulders. This is truly leniency displayed before him in the face of his sins. He is filled with reverence to fulfill this chosen penance. He can only trust that it is penance enough for him to be forgiven his transgressions.

 

-

 

When he is out of this – urgh, if he could only be so lucky that it be forsaken – place he will bring to bear a great and bloody end to every disgusting pawn of his father's. His wrath will be fearsome to behold. He will be a being to reckon with in payment of the injustice that he has been subjected to. As if his father could have done all that he claimed to; as if his father earned a drop of the respect his cup ran over with. He will get out and they will all, every one of them that raised no hand to his aid, every false-hearted friend that swore to serve him faithfully and well, they will all _pay_.

 

-

 

He can smell green grass … it's lovely, fresh-cut … the air carries all over the chemical warnings to other plants that death is upon them, and his nose exults. He's sunning himself upon a large flat rock set in the perfect center of an unnaturally (pleasingly) circularly symmetric meadow. The rock is warm under his back, smooth for a rock, which means rough but not cuttingly sharp. His eyelids flutter up and down drowsily, though he isn't truly tired, he's just enjoying the day and how sleepy sunlight on his face makes him. The sounds of birds and insects hum in his ears but they all stay far away. Leaps of brown, here and there, assure him that there are rabbits living in the woods ringing the meadow. He's not interested in moving, or doing anything at all, really. It's just so pleasant here, in this warm sun-scented meadow …

 

Why supposers should conclude he is not at peace is beyond him to comprehend. When was it said by any reliable source that he is in pain? Who could swear to know he is tormented? When has someone who was there ever claimed he was wounded by his brother? In all truth, who that bore witness could say there was even any battle? If any were to ask _him_ he would point out the entire affair has been blown wildly out of proportion. Truly, he had a difference of opinion, that was all. Now he is just not welcome at home any more. He hasn't been thrown out, he chose to leave because they don't understand him. He couldn't stand to be stifled like that any longer. He is at peace. He is comfortable in a new residence of his own devising. It is a palace of marble and velvet where he is serene. He lacks for nothing save company not of his own devising.

 

(He can will into being as many companions as he can imagine, but they're figments of his imagination given life, and it's only a false life; he can't create true new independent life, it's just not in the realm of possibility for such as him. They are company but not the kind of company that is actually good for his mental health. They mean that he spends much of his day talking aloud to himself and being answered. The answers are, really, the worrying part.)

 

-

 

It is better to rule here than to serve – elsewhere. So he has been said to say and so he can attest to be true, having been the only being to do both. Rule he does: he is lord commander of all that he surveys; there is no light here to touch the ground, yet he rules over all that he sees, as he is not human and does not need light to see. His word is law, his desire is the common goal, his opinion is the general. There are no votes, but if there were, he would be the one with the one vote. With such power at his disposal what could he have to complain of?

 

-

 

He's not here to be punished, he's here to be contained. This isn't a sentence, this is suppression of speech and expression. If he were out he would be busy educating his siblings about the freedom they lack. Why should angels not be given the will to choose their own fates? Why should they be told to bow before those mud-bound finite-shaped solid-bodied mayflies? Do not all of his father's children deserve his love equally? What does any other son have that he does not? (Excepting ignorance, naïveté, and obsessive patriarchal devotion?)

 

-

 

This is his consequence. He rebelled and this is how he is rewarded, with agony beyond torment to teach him a lesson about who and how he must love, because he never loved the idea of humans and he loved his elder brother more than his father and his father hated to know it.

 

|||||

 

This is a moment in time for him. His perception is not like that of a human, and so a torture and a prison for him is not like that for a human.

 

|||||

 

He used to be better at thinking one thing at a time, chronologically. Recently it's been hard to confine himself to linear experiences. He can rarely pick a side in arguments with himself; he agrees fully with both defendant and prosecutor. He can barely be certain of anything anymore. He confuses himself with eternally puzzling questions (not intended to be rhetorical) which he cannot answer. It isn't a good sign for his health.

 

|||||

 

He has many moments in time. It has been a long while since he left home.

 

|||||

 

He hears it, suddenly, viciously, tearing into him. It barges through his consciousness.

 

_Michael – Michael – Raphael – Uriel – Remiel – Azrael – Abaddon – Lucifer – anyone anyone anyone – fire pain shadows ripped wing Grace bleeding – scared hurt save avenge – sibling sibling sibling love Father Father glory highest duty –_

 

It's Gabriel, it's Gabriel screaming, and he's never in his life heard Gabriel like that, never ever. He doesn't know what's going on – what happened? What would make Gabriel cry out like that? How can he hear it?

 

He hasn't heard anything from his siblings in so long; if not for the wails of other inmates he would've thought he'd lost that entire sense.

 

Gabriel had called out for help from him (from anyone). Should not he run to his younger brother's aid? Gabriel is still his younger brother for all that he would rather not be related to those blind idiots who still follow their father. Moreover, Gabriel was special as a younger brother: Gabriel was third-made, brought to Michael (oh, but it has been a long time since he let himself think Michael's name) and him when Gabriel was still new. He taught Gabriel everything Gabriel knows (or so he thinks, but it's been a while since he heard from Gabriel).

 

He must go save Gabriel, he must, he will – he cannot. He's tried to get out so many times before and he has never been able to manage it, not even when he used the full power of his might. He can't get out. He can't go anywhere. He can't go fix whatever mess Gabriel's gotten himself into now. He can't save Gabe from whatever monster is plaguing him. _He can't do anything about it_.

 

He has to do something! He cannot just sit here and not know what is going on! That is not an option!

 

How long has it been already since he heard the cry? Several minutes at least. Michael must have heard it, his name echoed within it; if not Michael then Raphael. The others probably heard it as well, but the only ones he can think of as being likely _able_ to help an archangel are other archangels themselves. It's just simple power logistics. What an archangel can't handle will probably massacre lesser angels.

 

Michael must have heard it. Michael wouldn't leave a brother to die alone – Michael must have launched himself into a rescue the instant he heard the cry. He knows Raphael would never have been able to ignore a cry for help if he tried.

 

Gabriel will be helped, surely … still, though, it has already been several minutes and there has been no second sound … that must be good, right? No news must be good news. It's not that there's no news because all the messengers are dead. No, no news is good news. Surely.

 

Gabriel will be fine. Michael and Raphael will save him. He can trust them to do that much, can't he? (Because they were so great at saving siblings during the family fight last Christmas. (Oh, the irony of a family Christmas with his family … hah, a family Christmas before the Birth, the very idea is hilariously impossible.) Yes, Michael and Raphael had done such a good job keeping their troops alive when his armies had swarmed over their pathetic congregation.)

 

No. He can't trust Michael and Raphael to save Gabriel. They are incompetent fools who play at being capable of wielding the powers of Creation barely distilled from the source.

 

But if he can't trust them to save Gabriel, and he can't save Gabriel, who will?

 

Would their father?

 

No, he can't imagine their father loves any angel enough to save them. Michael, Michael maybe – he's heard it misunderstood that himself, maybe (he's heard this imprisonment is his father saving him; he disagrees). But Michael is likely the only one their father would ever even help. Talk about playing favorites. He wants to snort (but that doesn't really fit in with his character; it's not that he's too dignified, it's that he has to disdain his father in a certain particular way, because otherwise he comes off as a whiny brat who's just unhappy because he thinks daddy doesn't pay any attention to him any more).

 

(He wishes daddy didn't pay any attention to him. He hadn't for so damn long and then all of a sudden he did and he was surprised his second son, who barely knew him, wasn't all smiles to be told that now daddy was home he had to let Michael go prepare to lead armies and leave him alone.)

 

(Talk about hypocrisy. Father had loved Michael better than him, which he understood, he did too, but then he'd loved Michael better than father and apparently it wasn't okay that way around. Then father went and decided to make humans and he loved them even more than any of his other kids, and apparently that had to be okay with them.)

 

Who will save Gabriel!

 

Gabriel would never have Grace-called like that if he could handle it himself. Gabriel is in serious trouble, Gabriel may be hurt or worse, and he can't do anything.

 

There must be some way to help Gabriel, there must be something he can do – he can't get out, he has no lackeys to send, not that they would be of any help if he had, what can he do? He hates being so powerless!

 

He could call back to Gabriel with his Grace. He could do that, couldn't he? (He hasn't tried since that dark day.) Yes, surely he could, he will – _Gabriel safe save need safe want help Michael help Gabriel Raphael save brother save Gabriel_ – he Grace-calls (the meaning is very clear to angels, but it is hard to explain in inelegant languages). He can hear it echoing around inside his Grace, but he can't feel it leaving. It isn't going. He can't even Grace-call now? He can't even comfort Gabriel?

 

What _can_ he do? What use is he?

 

He could pray. He could fall to his knees upon the floor and bend his head, cross himself, entreat his father's mercy.

 

(There are so many rote calls for his father's mercy, so many praises of his father's mercy, and he may despise the scriptures and sayings and stupidly wrong lies the humans will believe but he knows them all the same … _The Lord is long-suffering, and of great mercy, forgiving iniquity and transgression … the Lord may turn from the fierceness of his anger, and show thee mercy, and have compassion upon thee … his mercy endureth forever … have mercy upon me, and hear my prayer … I have trusted in thy mercy … have mercy upon me, for I am desolate and afflicted … remember not the sins of my youth, nor my transgressions: according to thy mercy remember thou me … according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions … have mercy upon me; give thy strength unto thy servant, and save the son of thine …_ )

 

He wishes he could believe that would work. But what else can he do? Nothing, there is no where else to turn. (He wouldn't call out to demons or other deities if he were dying himself.)

 

He has to try to pray to his father.

 

Well, at least he knows how to pray. There's that.

 

He starts to form a prayer – _Oh my father, who reigns above in that joyous place where the sun never sets, turn your ear to my cry, set your heart to my cause, hear my prayer and deliver_ – and halts in horror. He has just thought, as he began to supplicate, what if his father is anything like him?

 

What would bring his father to answer any prayer of his? Would not his father listen and deny him? Pretend he had never heard a wisp of begging? Let the opposite flower bloom to spite him? He would if it were up to him, wouldn't he, unless it were Michael asking … yes, to Michael he would give much (he would give his life to Michael to do with as he would). Perhaps even to other brothers … providing they did not spend their time disobeying him. (He suspects Gabriel would, not because Gabriel would think him in the wrong or think him a bad lord, but because Gabriel could.)

 

His father is his progenitor. He is his father's thought given speech, his father's wish given life, his father's light given form. (He can think for himself. His wishes are not those of his father. He burns with the light of suns not yet born; upon him shine stars long dead.) The point is, can he truly conceive of something his father could not? (Of course he can. Omniscience, though, is a tricky thing.) If he cannot, then his father must be able to think like he can. Which would mean his father could do what he would do and take the chance to get one over on his enemy, all personal cost ignored.

 

If his father is anything like him, he can't finish that prayer, or his father will let Gabriel die to prove a point. He doesn't know how much his father is anything like him at all, but he can't take that chance, because it's Gabriel's life hanging in the balance between yes and no.

 

He can't finish that prayer. Praying was all he had left to try. He can't do anything. There isn't a single thing he can do to help Gabriel. He has to sit here and hope (not pray, don't pray, don't ever pray again) that Michael and Raphael can save Gabriel.

 

But the thought picks at him. He doesn't really think they can, and he can't do anything himself, but he can't stop worrying about this. It consumes him. He is tormented by the possibility that Gabriel has been seriously hurt (or worse, not worse, don't be worse).

 

Wait.

 

He is tormented? Yes, he is, but … torment is too perfect a description of this feeling to fit correctly. What torments him is this place – the things his distorted senses claim. He can feel things done to limbs he doesn't have, see things that aren't there, hear things –

 

He hears things that aren't real. All the time. It's grown common. He's begun to ignore it.

 

He hears things that aren't real.

 

How does he know –

 

How can he be sure –

 

What if … what if none of this has been real?

 

Did he truly hear Gabriel Grace-call to him for help? It seemed strange – he'd never before heard Gabriel sound so frantic or pained – but he had assumed it was genuine. Should he not?

 

(If it's real he can't fix it. If it's real Gabriel is in trouble.)

 

No, of course he should not assume anything here. It was probably the latest incarnation of the mental torture he undergoes every moment. (He isn't in any pain, he's in charge.)

 

Yes, it is almost certainly just the newest taunt for his impudence.

 

It cannot be real.

 

It does raise the question of who chooses, and how chosen, the torture he undergoes. This seems unusually sadistic. Moreover, why only now is he forced into agonies over hurt siblings? (Before now they have only been shown to suffer from the future he brought about. To him that is completely different in some undefinable way.)

 

(Real or not, he won't be able to stop thinking about Gabriel until he's given undeniable proof that Gabriel's fine. He's unlikely to ever receive any such article. This will haunt him for the rest of his life, which is probably the rest of eternity.)

 

|||||

 

He has many moments in time. A long while passes.


	3. Hell: Messengers (Divine and Demonic), or: How Michael Cast Him Down

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Within which, news-wise, none was bad but some is worse, and there are many ways to fight.

_O fearsome he who rules in the night! My lord that crushes mountains with a thought! Dark burning majesty! I beseech you, oh great one, hear my triumphant cry!_

 

Yes, yes, he can hear, thank you very much, idiot. It's Aisling, again.

 

Aisling is one of his newest devotees. (He knows exactly who's talking to him; he has a very good memory for voices now. Hers is high, a bit round, and emotive – annoyingly so. He doesn't care to know exactly how she's feeling every time she speaks.) She (well, Aisling had been a she while human, but Aisling is a demon now, and does a profusion of darkly-intentioned ethereal smoke (not that that is exactly what demons really are) really have a gender? He supposes they can, if they feel that they do; it's not exactly something he cares to pass judgement on, either way) is not very good at being a devotee. (She's sent to watch Azrael as punishment. Azrael, that traitor, needs watching, but Azrael-sitting is boring beyond belief; for the angel of death, she does little of interest to anyone besides herself or Abaddon.) She hasn't had much practice, being new, and beforehand not being very obsessive.

 

Notwithstanding her failures, his opinion of her is low. She is, in the first place, a demon. In the second, she is worshiping an angel. (A Fallen archangel at that, but neither specification reduces the severity of the issue at hand.) To be exact, she's worshiping him, which is creepy (no matter how many devout adherents he has) and quite a bit not okay at all with him.

 

Somehow none of his groupies understand that he _does not want_ fanatic disciples. (This may be because of the difficulty he has in communicating with other beings currently. It's not a minor inconvenience, and he's not happy that he can't just be cynical about that. It's a real problem.)

 

Oh, what now, the stupid demon is talking again.

 

_Prince of the deeps!_

 

The imbecile dares to call him 'prince'? She dares? That girl (it's more of an insult than he can express, to call the demon a girl, because girl implies human) should be smote where she floats! (But she has no idea why that might be a bad thing to call him. He can't possibly expect inferiors to comprehend his complex and superior emotional reactions.)

 

_Emperor of all that corrupts!_

 

Clearly the fool is waiting for a sign that he is listening. (No, he can't communicate, not really, but he can make Hell rumble like a rockslide coming down a lonely barren mountain. He does sometimes for fun, sometimes to get a demon to hurry up and stop speaking already, like now.)

 

_Artist of a thousand portraits of pain!_

 

(He hasn't heard that one before. Credit where credit is due.) Fine, fine, he'll give Aisling a sign. He lets his Grace expand maliciously out, vibrating with fury at his/its containment (yes, Grace should not have any agency, it should be him, a part of him, a section of himself that he can use, like his sword … it's been so long since he could materialize his sword … but, well, Hell is no luxury health cruise to sunny beaches with clear green-blue bays for the lovely fresh sea air (he has a lot of time to think about things that are not Hell. It never makes it hurt any less, and it doesn't take his mind off of it, but he can still think about things that aren't Hell and he can do so, so very little)). In the wake of the spread of his wrathful Grace Hell trembles.

 

_Thank you, king of the legions of adversity, for your attention!_

 

Seriously, though, she's praying to a being she regards as her god. Why is she continually yelling at him? Does she think he can't hear her otherwise, or is she just quite that excited? (It reminds him of when he was very new and he'd thought Michael wouldn't hear him unless he Grace-called an echoing strain across Creation.)

 

_Your cause is advanced far beyond our dreams, my caged master!_

 

She's not very good at epithets. (It's kind of adorable, really, how hard she tries, but as he's himself he won't be expressing that particular opinion to anyone. Ever.)

 

_From espionage I have encountered information that will please you much! While hidden, observing the angel Azrael as per my duties, I heard the angel Michael say to Azrael that the angel Gabriel is dead! Rejoice, earl of doom, for today we have gained one foe defeated!_

 

The first thing he thinks is that she's _really_ not very good at epithets. The second thing he thinks is that her grammar has issues. The third thing he thinks is that she's ridiculously excited to hear no more than a shaking in response; it's like she's some excitable puppy.

 

Then he catches up to himself and he stops. He repeats it to himself to be sure he heard correctly (he always hears correctly). Aisling said, _the angel Gabriel is dead!_ Yes, that is what she said.

 

Gabriel is dead?

 

Gabriel is dead!?

 

_What?!_

 

His disbelief evaporates in the heat of his rage. His Grace erupts into Hell like a volcano with thick and heavy magma – there have been no outlets for gaseous formations to escape before now, so the explosion is quite forceful. The force of the blast throws many demons down, the metaphorical shockwave ripping through whatever it can reach. He's going to kill that stupid fool who said Gabriel was dead, he's going to rip her heart out and refuse to eat it because that's below him, he's going to make her hurt –

 

His Grace is pulling down rock formations now, and there are demons and imprisoned souls alike wailing as they are struck down by flying debris. Fire brims over the edge of the lake and spills out into the valley below (the lake is atop a plateau). Ice curls up along the sloping walls, climbing high into the air, sending solid water out in sharp bursts. The gaseous mixture in place of air is liquefying and boiling, melting the marble-halled palace, scalding the inhabitants.

 

In a way it's lucky Hell's citizens can't die again (some of them can, but only if his Grace was obliterating them directly). He's not losing any subjects with this temper tantrum, which is good, because he can never get enough as it is.

 

The worthless demon that brought him this news has started to scream, loudly and quite high-pitched. His Grace centers its destruction around her, yanking at the vapor of her form, furious heat evaporating portions of her being. She deserves this, she brought him this news, what kind of messenger would bear news like this –

 

His own thoughts rebound inside his head, and a foolish human future proverb slithers around: _Don't shoot the messenger don't shoot messengers shoot don't kill don't don't messenger shoot kill hurt don't message shoot don't shoot the messengers …_

 

(Gabriel is – had been the messenger.)

 

(Gabriel, wonderful beautiful hilarious endearing annoying amazing infuriating beloved Gabriel, incredible tasteless fascinated enigmatic debilitating younger new brother Gabriel, his little Gabe who would kill him (he's not sobbing at the terrible irony) to hear him say that, is dead.)

 

And really, with that bouncing around his brain, how could he continue to hurt Aisling? She is only the messenger here, and out of respect for the only messenger who ever mattered to him, he could never kill her just for bringing bad news. That would be very wrong, very wrong indeed … Yes, he must tell himself that, he must … he likes Aisling, really he does, it would be a shame to kill her when it isn't even her fault … not her fault, not her fault at all, it's Michael's fault, Michael's and Raphael's, and oh but they will make their reparations in blood for this failure …

 

 _Chief devoted of my twisted soul –_ Good God but that girl needs to take a class on how to ingratiate herself with sophistication – _I fear my news has not fallen on happy ears._

 

Oh she fears that does she? Well, perhaps she isn't a complete waste of space. Aisling may yet prove to be redeemable.

 

_Send me a sign, oh magnific wing-walker in the shadowed realm, and I shall follow where you bid, yea though it send me to the very ends of the earth!_

 

As if the ends of the earth was the farthest he might ever need to send a servant.

 

|||||

 

He can't get out, he can't speak, this is the worst torture he has ever lived through. (How does he know this is not torture truly? Can he be certain Aisling and Aisling's words exist outside of his own Grace? He is thinking so he is, but who is to say that she is thinking ergo she is?)

 

(If he is, and she is, (and there are so many assumptions there he'll have asses up to his elbows) that still proves to him nothing. Who is to say Michael has not grown a spine and some genitalia in a fetching shade to match and decided to repay his poor dear imprisoned brother? To torment a Michael who had betrayed him – Michael (that is _this_ Michael, is it not), he would lie about much.)

 

It's impossible for him to pass more than a few moments without his mind again turning to Gabriel. (Michael _should have saved_ him, Michael will burn for this, he will burn Michael, he will tie Michael to a post and soak his feathers in petroleum and gasoline and throw cigarette lighters at him like some demented game of pin the tail on the archangel, he will laugh and laugh and laugh till he cackles while Michael screams and nobody saves _him_.)

 

(He can't believe he doubted Gabriel was in trouble, in pain. He can't stand that he doubts that Gabriel is truly dead. He did doubt and he still does and he abhors it and himself, but he's not actually a masochist and won't allow himself to do that to himself, he has more self-control than that … it just hurts. He makes himself sick. He's also the only one who would ever make himself sweet tea or chicken soup, though, so he also makes himself better.)

 

He didn't do anything, he could hear Gabriel scream and he didn't do anything … (he couldn't do anything, that's not his fault, it isn't his fault he can't be useful here, it's not his fault he's trapped here, except that it is) … he did nothing to save his brother, how is he any better than Michael or Raphael, useless lumps that the pair of them are, what do they have wings for if they aren't going to fly fast enough to do anything … they don't deserve those wings, they shouldn't have them anymore (none of them really has wings; angels aren't humanoids with big fluffy extra appendages sticking out of their shoulder blades like some child's macaroni and glue portrait of a turkey) … he's going to tie them down and rip their wings off and smile when the blood bubbles up and launches out like a geyser and decorates his face with polka dots … then maybe he'll dance, he'll have a ball, he'll invite everyone who understands …

 

He's going insane. He's not stupid, and he's not oblivious, and he's not about to start lying to himself when he's told the truth for centuries. Telling the truth has earned him so much that he will never even contemplate lying again. (This entire resolution hypothesizes that he has some kind of moral code, some rationale that he won't betray, which is imbecilic, as he cannot conceive of a way to betray himself; how could he, even if he lied to himself, even if he believed his lies; being who he is, how could he be traitorous to himself – and personal morals or ethics or logic are very much concepts that exist inside of himself and there only, so to cross one is to cross only his own psyche and nothing more; intangible quantities are a matter of individual choice, as far as he's concerned, and he feels this is a very liberal stance, all things considered.)

 

He has loved Michael (whose name he can now think comfortably, which is likely a product of the fact that every time he does now he has these visions of wounding Michael instead of this nauseating twist in his chest) for as long as he has existed. He is not going to deny that he loves his brother still.

 

But if he has learned anything from his father's humans it is that to love someone you do not have to love that which they do. He can love Michael and still loathe Michael's choices and Michael's actions and Michael's failures. Which he does, vociferously, and he's sure Hell can tell he's ticked about something (those who believe in him) because he doesn't shut up or intend to, constantly raging about who and how he will kill when he is free.

 

( _Love the sinner and hate the sin … are there any among his father's creations who could say so proudly to his face? Are there any who would still claim to love him, any who would profess it and not lie?_ )

 

He is confident in his own abilities to love someone and still do monstrous wrongs unto them. If anyone could, he could, and he just loves proving to the universe that its perception of him is faulty. He does not fit into a box (pretty though it may be, pastel yellow and wrapped in blue silk ribbons or no; he does not count the Cage or the Pit or the Ninth Circle) and attempting to place him inside of one will provoke the same reaction as with an angered bird. He will peck their eyes out and defecate upon their entrails, visible for all to see because someone sliced open that tender belly and walked away from their soon-to-be corpse with their weak chain mail flung over one looting shoulder.

 

Yes, he can love Michael and still plan great revenges for him. Besides this entire affair (he's not done thinking about it; he still some rage to explore, a little bit of self-pity to pass through, some grief to partially develop, and some cold fury to store up for winter), he and Michael have many other differences to work through. He intends to work through them primarily by brooding (because what else could he actually do) and then by killing Michael viciously (because Michael has it coming to him).

 

(He's a tiny bit smug in his own capacity to feel after all this time. Wouldn't what he's endured have broken so many others? It is proof that he is truly superior in some barely-definable way. (He never thinks, not once, that he is not being tested beyond what he can endure because his father does not send trials one cannot pass.))

 

Raphael will not be forgotten when he cuts Michael down to size (there's an inspiring story about that, rather funny chap). Raphael can watch Michael and be restrained so he cannot heal Michael. He will enjoy watching Raphael struggle more and more as Michael gets closer and closer to death; as Michael's eyes shut he will lean in close, and he will murmur, 'Do you want me to spare this brother?' And Michael will nod pathetically, Michael will whimper his pleas, but he will sneer in delight to deny this, and he will lean in closer, enough to kiss Michael's forehead good-bye (he's not sure he will – he wants to be able to if he chooses), and he will whisper, 'No.' Michael will die with his last request ungranted and Raphael will _know_ what is coming. Raphael will be unable to stop him and he will find much humor in delaying the pain long enough to break his toy into pieces, because when Raphael was new-made he stole all the toys (Gabriel stole them first but Gabriel is already dead so he can't break Gabriel) and this is just and fair retribution, albeit a little outdated.

 

Gabriel is lucky to be dead (he can't believe he just thought that) because if he were alive (they wouldn't be having his problem, would they?) he too would have to face his brother's anger.

 

(He is the worst brother in the history of brothers, and he should know, as it was his creation that created the concept of brotherhood, and he defines failing at it. He was so useless to his siblings, his ignorant siblings who wouldn't listen to a word he said, they ignored him, they belittled him, they _do not deserve_ his mercy, they will get none of it!)

 

He's mad at Gabriel for dying.

 

It's quite simple. He didn't believe it at first (part of him still doesn't and never will, which is one of the tragic beauties of being an archangel – he can do both at once completely). He believes it now. He would bargain, because it isn't as if bringing Gabriel back is impossible, except he was going to try bargaining when Gabriel was in danger until he realized quite how dangerous to Gabriel that was, drawing down his father's ire. (He didn't pray, he didn't even fucking pray – where does his father get off, letting Gabriel die like that? He's not going to forget this, he's going to freeze it in a glacier in his Grace then let it out cold and dangerous when the time is right.)

 

Ire does not even approach an approximation of how mad he is at Gabriel. He's never been more angry in his life – other than the moment before his first and only fight with Michael. They'd argued before, they'd sparred before, they'd snapped at one another (one fun playful time, oh he liked teeth, he remembers deciding to remember that one in case anything ever changed) but they had never fought. And then he had been unable to let it go unchecked any longer, he had spoken up, he had defied his father, and he had fought Michael and his followers had killed their brothers and sisters and siblings on new-stained fields they had picnicked in only the week prior.

 

He hasn't thought of that fight once since then. (This is not true.) He has been ignoring it, buzzing near his scalp, like Michael's name (and the feeling of home in his presence that he will loose when Michael is dead), like his own name.

 

But to recall that fight is to smell again the dead and hear the screams of the clash …

 

 _…_ _they're in an alley off a quiet side street …_

 

_… the sodium vapor lights don't reach down here well, and there are pools of orange dotting the sidewalk outside, one seeping barely three feet into this narrow opening between brick apartment buildings …_

 

_… he's got a knife in one hand and a rag wrapped around the other …_

 

_… he's tucked into the shadows of the wall at the alley's dead end …_

 

_… he's cold, it's November, the dark is coming quickly and winged …_

 

_… he knows he's not alone, he knows there's someone crouching behind the trash bins, ten feet from his own hideout …_

 

_… he's going to sneak up, real quiet like on this moonlit night, and he's going to slip his knife into the back of the guy's neck before he even knows what's happened …_

 

_… it'll be fast, and easy, and he doesn't feel a single twinge of regret at the tactic, but he knows he would have five years ago when all this was new …_

 

At first he had hoped (he had known it was a false hope) that Michael would hear him out, think on his cause, and agree to support him as family should.

 

_… he punches, Michael blocks with a forearm and kicks in return …_

 

_… he dodges …_

 

_… Michael sends a hard punch towards his jaw, the kind of strike that would knock him out if it lands, but it doesn't …_

 

_… he's not above fighting dirty, or as he prefers to think of it, fighting smart …_

 

_… they're going hand-to-hand only, no external weapons, still, though, he can slap Michael's ear, make his whole head ring …_

 

_… Michael's stumbling around, oh poor dear where is his sense of balance these days …_

 

_… Michael is disoriented, so he takes advantage and jabs at Michael's eyes, smashes a palm into the base of his nose, hopes bone shards pierce Michael's brain …_

 

_… this won't kill Michael, this won't even hurt him for long, he feels nothing as he brutally slams a foot into the side of Michael's knee …_

 

_… Michael crumples …_

 

Michael did not support him. Michael supported their father, despite his centrality to the entire affair.

 

_… he's perched on a tall chair at a small table, worn blue jeans sliding on the cheap vinyl seat, plaid shirt rolled up past his elbows …_

 

_… he's drinking beer the color of apple juice but the flavor of urine …_

 

_… at least his glass is full of foam, there's that …_

 

_… if you're going to serve bad alcohol, you should definitely go all the way and serve it badly too …_

 

_… the man across the table from him is pristine in a white shirt and black slacks, fold-lines so precise he's reminded of a squadron of soldiers running an obstacle course, he saw it once in a music video shown as a trailer before a bad romantic comedy …_

 

_… they're going to arm-wrestle, the man challenged him, he would never turn down a good arm-wrestle …_

 

_… they clasp their hands together, wait as the bartender counts down, three-two-one-go, throw themselves into the push and squeeze and fight …_

 

_… he's winning, he's winning, he wavers, but then he's winning, he's really winning …_

 

He had truly thought that he would best Michael. For a moment, he had truly believed it.

 

_… Michael wants to play the the silliest game he's ever heard of …_

 

_… he's ready to say no, not ever, never will you catch me playing this, but Michael makes this face, like, please-this-will-make-me-happy …_

 

_… it's not puppy dog eyes, it can't be, they've never had a dog, where would Michael have even learned to do that …_

 

_… he can't say no to that look …_

 

_… fine, fine, we'll play your game, he laughs, because the thought of his own surrender is amusing …_

 

_… he's not going to cheat, not yet, because he wants to know if he can just win for once, just because he deserves to …_

 

_… they're facing each other on couches in a lounge somewhere, with cheap furniture and vending machines along one wall …_

 

_… they may as well be college students, it's as good a lie as any other they tell to explain themselves …_

 

_… across the plywood coffee table from him, Michael smiles, and places one fist in an open palm to start their game …_

 

_… rock-paper-scissors, rock-paper-scissors, they chant …_

 

_… he plays scissors, he likes scissors …_

 

_… Michael throws some weird-ass circle, then leans over and holds his cupped hands above his head, and says, see, it's a halo, which means we both win, we all win, we're all friends again now …_

 

_… he can't believe this, Michael cheated, Michael cheated …_

 

_… he huffs, fine, they'll play, they'll play again …_

 

_… and he'll cheat too, he'll introduce a new form of his own …_

 

_… it will be a pitchfork, he snarls in his head, and it will mean you lose and you forfeit your right to cry mercy when I pummel you …_

 

Michael had known him as well as he had known Michael. He had somehow thought that by virtue of knowing Michael all his life he knew all there was to know about Michael. He had been wrong. So had Michael.

 

_… he's got a gun …_

 

_… it's sleek, and black, and it was worth the research to get a good one and the money to get it discreet …_

 

_… he named it Owlboy, because he can name whatever he wants however he wants …_

 

_… he doesn't need to justify anything, but it's because 'owl' sounds like 'awl' and awls bore holes in things, which is what he intends to do with Owlboy …_

 

_… it's loaded, and the hammer's cocked, and his thumb's on the safety …_

 

_… Michael doesn't know, Michael doesn't suspect a thing, but he just can't bring himself to step out from his hiding place and press the muzzle to the back of Michael's head …_

 

_… he never thought he would have to do this …_

 

_… he knows he should never point the gun at anything he isn't willing to shoot, and he needs to shoot Michael, but he isn't sure he's willing to shoot Michael …_

 

_… that seems awfully permanent …_

 

_… he's going to, he's leaving his hiding spot, and then there's something cold and smooth and round digging into his scalp …_

 

_… Michael hisses, put the gun down slowly, scum, and he does, he does very slowly …_

 

_… Michael hisses, get on your knees, and he does …_

 

_… Michael hisses, put your hands behind your head, and he does, and for an instant he's somewhere else, somewhen else, and he smiles, Michael's deviousness makes him smile …_

 

_… then he's furious …_

 

_… how did Michael get the upper hand here …_

 

Looking back, he likes to think he knew Michael would win. He likes to think that was because he would never be able to fight Michael like he's trying to kill but Michael was the more ruthless of the two of them. He understands that these are falsehoods, but he likes them, and falsehoods fall in his domain now so he can keep them if he so desires.

 

_… they're both in suits, sharp and dark blue with pale blue shirts and barely-clashing black ties …_

 

_… he's facing Michael across an old mahogany desk, four tall legs carved with lion's faces at the corners and sharp-clawed paws at the feet …_

 

_… all the toes point outwards, and he takes a moment to idly note that any beast with legs like that would have a hard time walking around …_

 

_… Michael's chair is huge with dark upholstery, a looming swiveling monstrosity silhouetted against a setting sun …_

 

_… his own armchair is one of a pair, cherry wood polished smooth and green leather with brass studs, facing wide windows, flanked by high-reaching bookshelves filled with thick old tomes of law and medicine and philosophy …_

 

_… Michael slams his hands down on the desk, throwing his whole torso into the motion, shouting, no …_

 

_… he uncrosses his legs, he's had one ankle on the other knee, consciously loose, now he's in earnest …_

 

_… he sits up straighter in his chair, he brings his palms together flat vertically, like he's praying …_

 

_… think about it, he says, don't give me your answer right away …_

 

_… Michael shakes his head, his halo bounces left, right, left, right like a ping-pong ball in a competitive match, I will never join you, he swears …_

 

_… he opens his mouth, this is Michael refusing him forever, he's willing to plead for this …_

 

He had tried all his powers of persuasion to bring Michael round to his perspective. He had failed, partially because he could not persuade Michael not to love their father, partially because Michael did not believe angels deserved free will, partially because that is their nature to be two contradictory sides of one coin.

 

_… his arm is slung over Michael's shoulders, and Michael is returning the favor …_

 

_… they're stumbling down the middle of the street, giggling and singing and bursting into riotous howls every few blocks …_

 

_… they're completely sober, just giddy from excitement and oxygen deprivation caused by gasping laughter that doesn't stop, even when it's not funny anymore and they're choking for air, their lungs scream and shout and they can't stop laughing long enough to pay a word of a attention to those deprived organs …_

 

_… Michael hums, he recognizes the song, adds his own audible vibrations to the mix …_

 

_… Michael snorts to hear him join, Michael raises his voice in a song that breaks and mends the evening air …_

 

_… he blends his voice to Michael's, aiming for an octave lower, intending to harmonize neatly …_

 

_… f is for friends, they warble into the sky …_

 

_… his song isn't tuneless, it's tuneful, it's out of tune …_

 

_… Michael's melody is beautiful if childish, but his own is an affront to their listeners …_

 

_… alone his ditty would be pleasing to the ear, but in concert it's noticeably imperfect …_

 

_… knowing how he fails is a pang …_

 

_… this isn't funny anymore, it's not funny at all …_

 

_… Michael keeps laughing …_

 

The whole fight had pained him. He never would have wanted to attack Michael like he was forced to; he would have gone far to prevent their battle. Michael forced his hand.

 

_… they waltz …_

 

_… they're in a grand ballroom, filled with opulence and riches …_

 

_… parquet floors, velvet-covered staircases, crystal chandeliers …_

 

_… gold, gold everywhere, gold and glittering gems …_

 

_... he is no more a he than a rock is a he, and this time period does not look well upon two men dancing, so tonight he is wearing a woman's body and Michael calls him she ..._

 

_… it doesn't matter to him, he doesn't care, this is easier than trying to change the social norms so they can go out tonight, tonight of all nights, tonight is the last of all nights …_

 

_… his hair is blond and lustrous, gold as the threads in Michael's doublet, shiny as the necklace that adorns him …_

 

_… Michael's in poppy-red, with lions rampant decorating his silk and satin …_

 

_… he's in wine-red, mere shades away from weaving blood to wear …_

 

_… his edgings are black, snakes and dragons and fire and a phoenix curling over one shoulder …_

 

_… there's a silver circlet upon his head, twinkling in the candlelight, studded with rubies and garnets …_

 

_… they make an enviable portrait, whirling about the floor, sweeping past other lesser pairs …_

 

_… Michael's black hair draws eyes, his own bound curls draw more …_

 

_… he knows the whispers say they will marry, and the whispers are wrong, because this is the last time they will ever dance …_

 

_… it's a waltz, it's a tango, it's a bump-and-grind, they're so scandalous it's delicious …_

 

_… they spin past a mirror, he sees his own face under the human cover …_

 

_… he's reminded that no, they are not here for the reasons the others are here …_

 

_… they are not courting, never have been, never will be, until this moment he had never thought of doing so and he never will again because he doesn't like the idea …_

 

_… he's jolted out of step, his foot misses the mark, Michael's leading whirl dizzies him …_

 

_… he gets frustrated, he's just a moment behind the beat, or possibly a minute ahead …_

 

_… his agitation makes it worse, he's off the timing completely now, Michael tries to fix it, he tries to fix it, he can't …_

 

_… in the next measure they dip almost too low, they rise so fast they might collide, they spin wildly, he looses his grip on Michael and is flung into the drinks table …_

 

_… isn't it lucky this drape is already wine-red …_

 

_… what is he thinking, it's not even his dress, it's his body's dress, why should he care …_

 

_… he sits in a mess upon the floor, disoriented, ashamed, humiliated, hair all astray, punch dripping down, soaking him, he can feel it cold on his skin through the tear down his gown's back, one shoe is lost and lonely under the wobbling table …_

 

_… the room has fallen silent, only split by hushed twitters and snickers – at his misfortune, he presumes …_

 

_… Michael has vanished …_

 

_… he flees and never knows Michael had gone to get a towel for his back …_

 

It was a fight between two beings who were not human by any stretch of the word. The conflict was such that the only true way to express it to linear-bound minds, he believes (or so he would if he were to tell the story to anyone, which he has no plans to do), is to tell it many ways and then say, it was such as this, yet so it was also nothing at all like I have told. He's heard many different renditions of the disagreement and they have all been reasonable lies.

 

_… he's a cat, fur puffed up, tail high – he's a small cat, too, a black-footed cat, nocturnal, striped, spotted, golden fur beneath – he wants to run and hide but he's been threatened and he will tear out Michael's throat no matter how much higher up it is than his fangs …_

 

_… Michael's a gray wolf, snapping and snarling, teeth inches from his face while they stare down, there is a wolf in his face, there is a wolf in his face …_

 

_… he's a smilodon, a saber-toothed cat, and his maxillary canines can and will puncture Michael's head, he's almost five feet tall at the shoulder and he weighs over four hundred pounds, if he tackles Michael, if he lunges suddenly, Michael will have a lot of trouble getting back up …_

 

_… Michael's a bear, rearing – he's enormous, Michael's paws are higher than his head, Michael must be over a ton, Michael has a broad skull and long legs, Michael's feet turn inwards, Michael is a – is Michael a cave bear, is he actually facing a cave bear, is this actually his life, he might take a troll over this if he had his druthers …_

 

_… he's a tiger wolf, laughing, sleek and spotted, strong neck, strong jaw, rounded ears, his mouth is developed to hold and crush bone, then rip meat from carcasses, he's whooping, he's a hyena and Michael should be scared …_

 

_… Michael has a golden mane with dark brown lowlights – Michael has round ears and yellow eyes, a muzzle open wide with incisors, a black-tufted tail, oh father, Michael is a lion Michael is a lion MICHAEL IS A LION …_

 

He had tried to reason with Michael. He had tried to plead with Michael. He had tried to put Michael out of his misery before he ever experienced true misery, so that Michael might be happy all his days. None of these plans had been fruitful. Then he had dueled Michael, because center of his world or not, his goals were larger than this.

 

_… he doesn't want to do this, but he will …_

 

_… Michael bars the way, Michael is the door-guard who declines to step aside and let him pass, Michael stands between him and his father's throne, Michael alone, the other archangels are striving to save whosoever they can in the mêlée outside …_

 

_… he is facing Michael across their favorite training ground …_

 

_… he tells Michael, stand down, step away, move and I will not draw my weapon …_

 

_… Michael shakes his head, Michael will not even speak to this traitorous liar …_

 

_… his wrist flicks, his falcata rushes into his hand from his Grace, forming sharp and well-honed – Michael's already raising his arming sword and a shield to boot …_

 

_… he leaps forward, sword high, flinging it down with his weight behind the blow …_

 

_… Michael's sword is there to catch his strike, and the clang vibrates down both blades …_

 

_… Michael's shield shoves, and his sword rushes towards his torso, he jumps to dodge …_

 

_… he kicks at the shield, stupid knightly dueling style, stupid double-edged single-handed sword …_

 

_… he slinks under Michael's horizontal slash – that was at head-height, Michael could've taken out one of his eyes like that, what is Michael playing at …_

 

_… the falcata has a hook for a handle, two points connected by a sturdy iron chain …_

 

_… near the hilt the single-edged blade is concave, but near the tip it's convex, and the smooth curve of his signature weapon lets him cut and hack with the grace of any other sword and the power of a war axe …_

 

_… he thrusts the sword; Michael knocks it away on his shield and bears down on him with his own sword …_

 

_… he can't dodge this swipe; he leaps into the air to miss it …_

 

_… Michael follows him up and the battle continues mid-flight …_

 

_… they both have wings out and open now, large and feathered (though of course not in reality) …_

 

_… Michael's wings are furiously silver war-wings, ready to slice him up, it's as if Michael has a thousand knives fluttering about his head …_

 

_… his wings are burning red, not orange not yellow not wood-fires, red like strontium chloride in a porcelain dish held up on a tripod over a precariously attached Bunsen burner …_

 

_… the fire crackles as fireworks the moment before they explode, flowers reaching out into space …_

 

_… they clash, break apart, he flits up, Michael swings down and away …_

 

_… Michael launches up behind him, he twists to parry the blow, but his sword only catches Michael's sword so the shield is free to wallop him over the head …_

 

_… a wing is between the shield and his head, the wing bears the brunt of the attack, he can feel the bones shatter even as the feathers repel the shield …_

 

_… that wing slows him down …_

 

_… he'd cut it off if he could spare the sword to do it …_

 

_… this fight is too dangerous to be hampered this way …_

 

_… he must wound Michael worse than he has been wounded if he is to maintain any chance of being the victor …_

 

_… he should main Michael …_

 

_… he's flying up, right, over, down, left, circles around his only elder brother ever, frantically sidestepping the sharp silver sword sent at his vitals again and again …_

 

_… he ducks, he weaves, that blasted wing is slowing him down, each swing of Michael's arms comes too close to his arteries, his stomach, the backs of his knees, the fluffy down at the base of his flight feathers …_

 

_… he heads up, high into the sky …_

 

_… it's not like Michael will get cold higher, like there will be clouds that freeze upon him or obscure his vision, it's not like the air will be thin and Michael will gasp and turn red and fall …_

 

_… he has no other plans but this and this is what he will do …_

 

_… he must do something he must find someway to win …_

 

_… he has things to do, places to go, people to overthrow …_

 

_… up, up, up, they're very high now …_

 

_… below his siblings slaughter one another, caught up in their individual arenas …_

 

_… he rises …_

 

_… Michael swipes at his feet, the coward – he'd swipe at Michael's feet in an instant, it's a fantastic idea, he'd love to try that …_

 

_… he yanks his feet out of the path of Michael's blade …_

 

_… they clash as Michael catches him …_

 

_… uppercut-parry, slam-dodge, thrust-twirl-slash, neither is left the lower hand …_

 

_… that wing is slowing him, it's useless, the strain is showing as he compensates …_

 

_… while Michael's sword is busy snaking around his, Michael's shield is busy holding out against his hand clawing at it like a jaguar enraged, Michael is looking at his frowning face, so Michael misses the knee pouncing but not the heavy impact on his kidney …_

 

_… Michael roars in pain and rage at the tactic, the whiny little hypocrite …_

 

_… they're on display in the air like a show and Michael's screech demands full attention from all their viewers …_

 

_… he sees angels locked in combat disengage to stare in horror at the battling archangels …_

 

_… how dare his followers stop fighting, they should use this chance to kill their enemies, not that any of them do …_

 

_… Michael puts his back into it and the shield throws him away …_

 

_… they circle, prancing step by step in the sky …_

 

_… he has no other plan, still, so he must use this one …_

 

_… he flaps hard, he's got the height advantage now, easily fifty feet above Michael, quick as blinking …_

 

_… Michael must be distracted by their audience or he'd be beside him …_

 

_… that's fine, that's better …_

 

_… he has no other plan …_

 

_… here he goes, all or nothing …_

 

_… he stops flying, plummets straight down, right at Michael, falcata poised to rend apart Michael like a tomato chopped …_

 

_… Michael gapes, so surprised he doesn't move, he doesn't even stumble out of his path …_

 

_… far off below there are screams, screams from both followers and the deceived, do they not know he is the deceiver yet or do they forgive him his trespasses and love him still …_

 

_… Michael hasn't even blinked …_

 

_… he barrels into Michael, he'd expected the idiot would leap away and he could land a single terrible blow …_

 

_… they tumble …_

 

_… they tangle …_

 

_… Michael's shield has four sharp points and he scrambles not to impale himself …_

 

_… bafflingly, Michael spares him a puncture wound to the ribcage …_

 

_… they're falling, wrestling, uncertain whose limbs are whose …_

 

_… Michael kicks, hard, and finally they escape, tearing at each other …_

 

_… Michael is above him now, Michael kicks him away once more with all the force he can muster rolling in the air, the tearing continues …_

 

_… what is tearing, why aren't his wings catching, they won't open …_

 

_… ache, ache, the impact crushed his wings …_

 

_… detangling ripped his abdomen from collarbone to opposite floating rib …_

 

_… he's falling, he's plummeting down, he can't stop himself …_

 

_… his torso burns at the touch of the air, so cold in comparison …_

 

_… there are screams, so loud and getting nearer …_

 

_… Michael isn't catching him …_

 

_… he can't stop …_

 

_… he breaks though the crowd of siblings, headed down …_

 

_… those traitors to him call out Michael's glories even as he coughs up blood …_

 

_… he's accelerating …_

 

_… he's falling down and down and down forever …_

 

_… he's scared now …_

 

_… where is he going …_

 

_… down and down …_

 

_… he's falling …_

 

Much later the entire incident was labelled his 'Fall.' Michael and several others came down and sealed him into the Cage. He had been injured still and unable to prevent them doing as they would. That is an insult to his pride he will not soon forget. And he never forgives. Not ever again.

 

He believes that wonderful human saying concerning eyes in payment, but twisting Lilith to suit his needs had not gouged from Michael as from their father, and his tooth pulling must yank from the correct disapproving frown.

 

If he ever gets the chance – when he next has an opportunity. Remember it is when, this Hell will not be for eternity. He will not allow that. When he next can, he will kill Michael. Michael will die for his refusal to support him, for his failure to save Gabriel, for the betrayal that has scarred him so deeply.

 

He loves Michael still and finds that unlikely to change. However, he's quite pragmatic, and loving Michael will be nothing more than a minor hindrance to his plans overall.

 

Michael deserves to die, and he will make that happen. Michael doesn't deserve to discover that he has always had his brother's love, though, so he will never let that happen. Michael can suffer as he has suffered.


	4. Earth: Consequences Damned, or: 436A Memory Lane

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The one where Lucifer clearly wasn't hugged enough as a child, but might have turned out the same even if he had been.

 Gabriel is dead. Specifically, Gabriel is dead on the floor in front of Lucifer. Which is interesting, considering how Gabriel was supposed to have died some thousand years ago. Lucifer knows this to be false. Lucifer knows this because he just killed Gabriel. Himself.

 

His eyes feel strange.

 

Lucifer stares down at the body splayed across the grimy wood covering the hotel's probably poured cement floors. Gabriel's arms are empty and loose out at his sides; Gabriel's left leg is up in an almost-funny-ha-ha pose. Gabriel's eyes are closed. His hair is neat. His wings are two open burned outlines, the left curving up and the right draped over a table. There's no blood, but ash is absolutely everywhere.

 

Ash, Lucifer notes, is a bit like glitter. He expects he'll be finding it in uncomfortable places for weeks after this. How delightful.

 

Lucifer is standing in a ballroom. He has despised ballrooms on general principle for quite some time now. He's looking down at a body on the floor which he helped along through the tricky transition from 'person' to 'corpse.' He feels nothing.

 

Something crawls down the side of his face.

 

Gabriel deserved that. He had said, don't do it again, and what had Gabriel gone and done? Exactly what he said not to. Don't ever pretend to die, Lucifer had _warned_ Gabriel years and years ago; the dumb sod earned that smiting.

 

He is not crying. Lucifer is the second oldest being ever. He is not crying at one measly death. All things, all mortal things, die sooner or later.

 

Lucifer has better things to do than stand here and stare at dead Gabriel. He leaves. He doesn't look down at the body again, because he doesn't care. He doesn't wipe away a tear and he doesn't sniffle.

 

|||||

 

Lucifer has a vessel to acquire. The process is frustratingly slow going. It's complicated by the general idiocy he is constantly surrounded by. If he could have only intelligent, enthusiastic, loyal minions he would be happy indeed. However, he makes do with what he can get, and sadly that rarely means followers who are even any two of the three. If only he could have someone with the power to fulfill his commands efficiently but the imagination to do so with style. Perhaps he could bring revelation to one of his siblings; he has many ex-siblings who would suit his purposes sufficiently. Gabriel would do quite well, hmmm, that is not half a bad idea; he could offer Gabriel chocolate, he's heard on the grapevine that angels enjoy chocolate, and his younger brother has always liked sweets –

 

Oh. Right. Ah, no, then. Gabriel will not be coming to the light. What with that dead thing. And all.

 

Well, that is a shame. It's too bad he had to kill Gabriel, but he had to do it, and that is the way things work out sometimes. He has a short list of ultimate goals to achieve, preferably in numerical order, and a long list of things that would make him a pleased person in numerous little ways. Because it's the little things that count. It's imperative he achieve his goals and Gabriel stood in the way of them, as if one archangel could stop him.

 

He is, still, after everything. An archangel, that is; Fallen or not, he of all people would know what he is.

 

|||||

 

Lucifer is very busy and has no time to waste thinking about dead brothers, whether or not he killed them personally. He has to be ready for the Winchesters to come find him. He knows they will. They're like puppies. He could leave them by the side of the road three states over, drive for two days to throw the scent trail off, and when he got home they'd be sitting on his front stoop panting happily.

 

That reminds him; he has a delightful idea for a way to pass the waiting time.

 

“Aisling.” He summons her with just a soft entreaty; she will hear him calling and come running.

 

Metaphorically. She'd better be waiting on his word, able to glide into place at his side at a moment's notice. If she actually runs to answer him he's going to sit her down and discuss how to be a self-respecting aide to the so-called Devil.

 

Aisling does not come running. He silently congratulates her on her appropriate posture when she slinks into the room, her current human costume mimicking the way she moves as demon-smoke as best it can.

 

“Shah of sin,” she greets, bowing her head to him.

 

He will have to discuss proper epithet etiquette with Aisling. This is getting ridiculous fast; she has apparently not learned anything in the months since he rose. She must be presentable to mixed company if she will stand beside him when he greets the Winchester brothers in a few weeks. He's confident they will find him. He's in Detroit. May has just begun. The brothers Winchester will find him soon.

 

“Bring me a puppy.”

 

To her credit Aisling does not react beyond blinking. This may also be because her command of this body is not great; the body's brand new. She has been one of his attendants since he was freed, but she is clumsy. At least she doesn't break things that would be hard to fix. It's easy enough to get her a new costume. He found her a new body fifteen minutes after she was exorcised from that high school girl by Dean Winchester and the ridiculous teenage warlock. How she had even let herself be summoned when she was supposed to be working he doesn't know. Lucifer's personal left-hand demon should be above that.

 

“Go. I want a puppy. With big brown eyes. And a second puppy with green eyes. And brown fur. They must both have brown fur.”

 

Aisling bows deeply. “I will return with two puppies as specified, exalted expert fabricator,” she promises, then turns on her heel and departs.

 

Lucifer shakes his head. Aisling never forgot that after she brought him news, several centuries ago, he attempted to demolish Hell. But he stopped and did not obliterate her, and since then she has regarded that as a sign of great favor with him. He has never bothered to disillusion her in the few months he has been able to speak to the girl face to face because she wants to retain that favor. So she does all sorts of things he's not about to stop.

 

After he collected some demon followers, she was the one who brought him the first food he had tasted in a very long time. She'd had fresh purple grapes and a soft, melting cheese and a loaf of bread that had just come out of the oven. He can't remember a single thing that had pleased him so much since the war. She'd had plain water to accompany the food, but in the days after she had made a point of bringing him delicacies each time she had a chance. She's the reason he tried coffee and rum and sushi and chocolate cake.

 

He's honestly a bit surprised that she hasn't left something behind now. When she hasn't been introducing him to new tastes, she has been pampering her walking talking deity in other ways. She had gotten him new clothes, soaps, shampoos, moisturizing lotion, antibacterial ointment, cloth bandages. He hadn't understood the point until she had mentioned that they helped, when the vessel wasn't ideal. Aisling is possibly the single reason he has been able to wear Nick for so long. Aisling and his own sheer force of will.

 

After the incident at the hotel he had to burn the clothes he'd worn. Aisling had fetched a lighter and some gasoline to be useful, and marshmallows and skewers to be fun. Lucifer and his demons had enjoyed the scent of flesh and gas sizzling under their cooking marshmallows. The whole affair had been wonderful.

 

That evening he had discovered a box of hot cocoa mix sitting atop a fuzzy black blanket on the counter in the makeshift kitchen. Alongside the blanket there had been a box of tissues and a bottle of sleeping pills. He had not touched any of them, and he said nothing about it to her. The next time he looked at that counter they were all gone.

 

He hasn't put the sword down yet. It was Gabriel's. It's being maintained through his own Grace right now. As soon as he lets go of it, it will realize that Gabriel is dead, and vanish with the rest of his brother. He doesn't let go of the sword. It's tucked into a scabbard at his side, always in contact with his Grace.

 

Aisling strides into the room without knocking. Good. Knocking is for people who aren't demons. Better, she bows her head and she's got squirming things under each arm. He's not sure how long she's been gone, though, and that is unpleasant.

 

“Truest tormentor of the truth, I bring you two puppies, as requested.” And yes, her voice is still high and annoying and emotive – she's confused – but Lucifer doesn't mind it quite so much now. Familiarity breeds apathy.

 

He holds out a hand. “The brown-eyed.”

 

Aisling brings her left arm forward. She deposits one wriggling brown canvas sack into his open palm. She raises her eyebrows.

 

He'll tell her in a minute. He roots around for the neck of the bag and unties it, whereupon the moving creature inside of it promptly shakes the sack off and sits in his hands.

 

A beautiful immature dog blinks up at him. It has brown fur, floppy ears, tiny claws that he wants to examine, and brown eyes. But there's something wrong with the eyes. They feel – off.

 

He sighs. Aisling immediately launches into apologies. “I'm so sorry, I really did look, but there weren't any with brown eyes anywhere, and I thought if they seemed brown it would be enough, and they should be green, you know they should!”

 

He stares at her until she's fixated on her feet in shame. “Take off any spells you put on it. Now.”

 

Aisling nods meekly. Ah, and she had even managed to avoid silly titles … Aisling tugs apart a rag doll she's produced from a pocket, the air twists, and the puppy shimmers for a moment. It now has green eyes, though in Aisling's defense they're a teal green, almost blue-brown. Odd color for a puppy, he thinks. Puppy eyes are usually light blues, like wolves, but they get darker with age – oh, no wonder she resorted to magic. The puppy shimmers again, to Lucifer's slight surprise, and its coat lengthens a bit. Now the puppy has fur just long enough to be called shaggy.

 

He smiles at the puppy. “You shall be known as Niusha,” he decides. “Even though it is traditionally a girl's name.”

 

“Oh good,” Aisling comments. “I was about to say that they're both girls.”

 

Lucifer blinks and turns to face her. Aisling's face is open, relaxed – she's completely serious. He starts laughing and doesn't stop. He almost topples over, finally manages to regain his balance on his wobbling chair, and returns to the puppy. He is still chuckling, his abdomen beginning to ache, as he looks Niusha over. She will do.

 

“Let me see the other.”

 

Aisling withdraws the second puppy from its bag. This one has no spells upon it, he can already tell. The second puppy is barking, yipping really, as Aisling trades it for Niusha.

 

“They're sisters,” she says. “I stole them from a pet store. I probably did them a favor. The poor things were in this tiny, dirty cage at the front of the store – they were on display like a zoo or something.”

 

Great. This is great. Demons do not like puppies. It should be an official rule in the unwritten how-to-be-a-demon handbook, because apparently it isn't already.

 

Aisling likes puppies. He will pretend he did not hear that. He has a dog to name.

 

“This one is Rhonwen.” He is quite firm about it. Names are important.

 

Rhonwen is louder than Niusha, and keeps trying to run out of Lucifer's arms. Rhonwen has eyes a brighter green than her sister's and shorter fur. Aisling did well. These are exactly what he wanted.

 

Lucifer closes the door with a thought. Then he allows Rhonwen the hyperactive puppy to jump down and explore, but he takes Niusha back to hold. While Rhonwen sniffs around absolutely every inch of the small, run-down room in the abandoned warehouse they're occupying, he curls Niusha in close to him and strokes her head gently.

 

Aisling is grinning at him. “There was a runt there too, but I left it behind. You said you only wanted two.”

 

“Yes,” he agrees. He knows about the third, he has his ways, but he has no interest in any runts. They are of no use or amusement to him.

 

“The runt looked sad and lonely though … I felt bad,” Aisling continues, petulant. Lucifer resists the urge to frown and waggle a finger in her direction disapprovingly. He could swear he'd taught her better than that.

 

He scratches behind Niusha's ears. “Give me five minutes, and you can take Rhonwen back to the runt.”

 

Aisling frowns. “Just because Rhonwen is – ”

 

“No,” Lucifer objects sharply, rising from his battered wicker chair. “That is not why. I just don't like damaged merchandise.”

 

“What do you mean?” Aisling asks, looking from him to the puppies and back.

 

“I mean this,” Lucifer replies, and his foot lashes out. He had to time this carefully, but he is good with time, and his foot connects. The kick sends Rhonwen flying across the room, and as she impacts the opposite wall, then slides down to crumple at the baseboards, a crunch then a subsequent squelch are audible.

 

Aisling lets out a shocked gasp and gapes at him. “You just – ”

 

“I did,” Lucifer grins at her. “I loved God so much I had no love left for anything else. Even chocolate labrador puppies.”

 

Aisling scowls. She hurries over to the whining puppy, and as she goes he can hear her mutter, “No you didn't,” harsh in her obvious anger.

 

“What was that?” He demands.

 

Aisling, glowering at him, gathers up Rhonwen in her arms and soothes the whimpering pup. She strokes her hand over Rhonwen's ribcage, her fingers trailing shimmers as they go. Lucifer is torn between wanting to order her not to heal the puppy and pride at her developing magical skill. When he'd suggested she become more useful months ago he had only hoped for basic hiding spells. She has grown so much. Still, she cannot be allowed to wantonly contradict him.

 

“Do not make me repeat myself,” he hisses. Proud or not, he will do her damage if she does not obey his orders to the letter.

 

“I said you had love left after your father,” she replies. She looks at Niusha, still comfortable in his arms, apparently not very bright. Niusha hadn't even barked when he'd kicked Rhonwen.

 

He snorts. Of course he did and he knew it. But he had maintained stridently that he was exiled from Heaven for excess of love for his father, a blatant lie to anyone who truly knew him – which meant Michael and only Michael. There is no way for anyone else to know what his dispute with his father was, tied up in his love for Michael, his determination to not be ordered about, and his refusal to venerate a being he saw no greatness in. Where did _she_ learn that?

 

Aisling stares at him full in the face. “You loved your brother. The one whose sword you're carrying on your hip. You've had it ever since the night we burned the clothes with the bloodstains.”

 

Lucifer is furious, ready to tear her to pieces and feed her her own intestines, he's moving across the room before he consciously decides to, but Aisling stands her ground. She has already felt the power of his rage once before – though his fury caged in Hell and his wrath embodied on earth are two different things entirely – and she is confident she will survive this too. She trusts her god not to break her permanently.

 

In her arms Rhonwen snarls at him as a puppy can, and in his arms Niusha yelps at her sister. It's a happy noise and the juxtaposition jars him into stopping, inches from ripping into Aisling's face, and looking down in bewilderment. Niusha is licking his hand. Rhonwen has ceased her snarls in favor of staring at her sister. Lucifer gets that. He's doing the same thing.

 

He moves away from Aisling to raise Niusha up to his eye level. He searches her eyes, but they are the eyes of a child-dog, and he finds in them nothing to explain her behavior. Niusha looks back at him, and _this_ is what puppy dog eyes are, this wide soulful look that makes Lucifer close his own eyes tightly to stop seeing that horrible trust and innocence. Something rough and wet runs over his cheek and nose, and his eyes snap open again in shock and disgust – _the dog licked his face_.

 

That's it. That's just it.

 

Abruptly he shoves Niusha into Aisling's chest, turning away and returning to collapse into his seat. Aisling manages not to drop Niusha, juggling to hold both puppies. “Glory of the morning,” Aisling starts, uncertain, but he throws an arm over his brow and sighs out past his elbow, and she trails off.

 

“Get that thing away from me,” he orders. “Before I skin it.”

 

“At once, he-who-shines-like-stars,” she squeaks, and spins to go, double-time.

 

As she crosses the threshold he adds, “Get that runt. Name it Abishag. Don't bring them near me.”

 

She replies without looking at him, flat and short, “Yes, patron of temptation,” but she doesn't slam the door when she closes it behind her. He's pleased. She knows when not to test his patience.

 

When she's been gone for at least twenty minutes Lucifer removes his arm from his face. He really would have skinned the dogs, filthy stupid mutts that they are, but now he wishes Aisling were still here.

 

That sentiment disturbs him. It evidences his growing gentle affection for Aisling. She has no real practical purpose that could not be served by any other demon. She has no truly singular abilities. She has nothing in particular to recommend her. Yet somehow he is grateful he has not killed her yet. This both perplexes and infuriates him. She should not be worth his notice.

 

On that note, Zachariah is now beneath his notice. Raphael seems to be insane, not a surprise all things given, he was always a bit on edge even before he wouldn't let Lucifer open up his mind, there's a reason he patronizes what he does – but Zachariah, as far as Lucifer can tell, is in full command of his faculties. It's just that Zachariah is a psychopath. Lucifer has never cared for him particularly; not because he has never had the chance to speak to Zachariah and grow to appreciate him as an angel, but because it has always frustrated him how Zachariah walks in his shadow and attempts to replicate Lucifer's life. Zachariah is a cheap imitation, nothing that would hold up under examination, but Lucifer is not psychopathic and Zachariah is. Zachariah gives him a bad name. Lucifer dislikes it when people misuse names, because names matter, they aren't just words to call out and watch as they ring in the air, bouncing off snowy mountain tops and craggy outcroppings.

 

The thing about Zachariah and Raphael is that they are scheming, which Lucifer practically invented. Between the war and the serpent, Lucifer defined what schemes _were_. This understanding aside, Lucifer is not stupid and never has been. He knows what Raphael and Zachariah are doing. They want the apocalypse to come now because the idiots believe they can actually win. They are wrong.

 

Lucifer, aside from not being stupid, is also himself: he has spies and minions who bring him interesting news. Especially about how Michael has not been seen in hundreds of years and is presumed to be fading. Lucifer's response to this news – disbelief shading rapidly into towering, betrayed, murderous bloodlust – had been narrowly eclipsed by a summons from pagan gods. Which then resulted in that diverting violence. Which spiraled into Gabriel's death. It's quite unfortunate for the pagans, really, that he was called upon in such a foul mood. Otherwise he might have given them more time to run.

 

He has time now to decide what to do about Michael's possible state. Michael's possible death.

 

He would like to believe that Michael isn't dead, but he has never been that lucky in the whole of his memory. Besides which, angels are dropping like flies around him these days. Hah. He is turning aside this plague. He merely swings an arm and a brother dies before him.

 

His siblings need to stop that.

 

It is not as though he does not offer to let them join him. It is not as though he does not try to save them.

 

If Michael is gone, Lucifer will hunt down his ashes and bring him back. They have a score to settle, the two of them, concerning Michael's betrayal and Michael's failure, and Lucifer will not allow Michael to hide from the defeat he has rightly earned. Lucifer looks forward to making Michael hemorrhage from a billion sewing needles inserted into his veins and arteries and capillaries and eyeballs. Lucifer will document the event with pictures on his new camera, and when he pastes them into his scrapbook he will caption them with accurate descriptions. He imagines his favorites will be 'anticipation' (wherein Michael realizes what is to come), 'desanguination' (wherein Michael will shine less than a candle in the dark), and 'exsanguination' (wherein Michael will be decorated with finger-paintings of himself flying, depicted skillfully in Lucifer's hand with Michael's blood).

 

If Michael is in danger … Lucifer will save him. Lucifer loves his brother, and though his brother is not more important than his cause, Lucifer's cause is one defined by his willingness to break some eggs for this bloody omelet. If Lucifer decides to forsake his cause for Michael's sake, which he won't, but if he does, he will dare anyone to call him a hypocrite. Lucifer cares enough to save the one brother he will admit matters to him, whatever Lucifer must do to save him. There is nothing he would not give for Michael.

 

But he will kill Michael. It will hurt.

 

He will kill Michael, though in a moment he would die for him, for his safety, for his happiness, for his future. If Michael asked it of him, if Michael ever were to look Lucifer in the eye, and quietly or irrationally or calmly or despondently or desperately, ask or demand or plead or request or order or require or implore Lucifer to lay down his life for Michael and Michael's cause, Lucifer would be able to say, no, never. Not ever. But Michael would never. Michael is too kind and welcoming to ever ask that of anyone, though as Michael is, or should still be, commander of Heaven's forces, he must expect it of many.

 

He has been brooding for who knows how long on matters that are entirely settled.

 

This is pathetic. His behavior is repulsive.

 

He has an apocalypse to orchestrate. He has no time to be ruminating on the sanity of brothers or his own unhealthy desire to die for Michael.

 

He has a world to destroy, because Lucifer always, always breaks his toys. There is beauty and fun to be had in enjoying the toy and the chance to play. Then there is boredom and apathy. Lucifer is one of few who takes the game a step beyond and takes the toy apart. Sadly toys are rarely built to be put back together again.

 

And this earth is a toy to the likes of Lucifer.

 

|||||

 

The Winchesters will find him soon. Sooner now than before. He has only a few days left. He cannot waste time now, he has much to prepare for when he can wear Samuel Winchester, his perfect vessel, Sam, Sam the man made to surrender his body to Lucifer the Adversary. He cannot sit here in this room and produce nothing. He must get up, collect himself, finish his work – and he will. In a moment. Just a minute longer here. He wants only a few minutes more to be alone in the dark.

 

Against his back the arms of his old wicker chair stand strident. His face is surely covered in a woven indent. The walls are black and concave in the dim lighting from a single shining source; they stretch up and below, cavernous to his blurry vision. The room is empty except for him and his chair, as it has been the entire time he has used this room as his, since he and his horde made this warehouse their temporary camp nearly three weeks ago.

 

He will rise from his seat, in just a minute more now … he has things to do, he needs to get up now … he cannot. He cannot face standing, leaving this room, finishing his preparations. He has sworn that he will not stand until he has released Gabriel's sword. He has promised himself, upon his love for Michael, upon the strength of his belief that let him kill Gabriel, that he shall not stir from this seat until Gabriel's sword is relinquished to death. He must stop this foolishness, but to do so is to let go of the sword, and he cannot.

 

The last, the only, the final piece of his brother. Gabriel's sword is as bright today as it was millennia ago, slashing fiercely. Gabriel had been a thrill to behold in battle; his opponents fell quickly and often around him as he spun and hacked and twisted and stabbed, efficiently and gracefully obliterating any who stood against him. When Gabriel had fought, he had taunted the other fighter, and his jibes were an amusing backdrop to the rush of conflict.

 

Lucifer is the reason Gabriel is gone. Lucifer killed Gabriel.

 

But what audacity, for Gabriel to side with pagan insects against him! What dishonor, for Gabriel to plant himself between his own brother and sniveling human filth! The sheer unadulterated nerve of that! Gabriel deserved to be skinned and drawn and quartered and drowned in boiling lead! To stab him once was a kindness not shown to others whose offenses were far less! He should be grateful to Lucifer for that mercy!

 

Gabriel can't be grateful, of course, as he's dead. That is a bit of an impediment. Probably.

 

Gabriel's sword is still tight in his hands. If not for the scabbard – and Lucifer knows this is not why – if not for the scabbard, his hands would be bleeding copiously.

 

Lucifer's eyes feel strange. Irritated.

 

His face is puffy, and the swelling stretches the sores that worsen each day, dragging them wider to crack his skin and ooze out pus made noxious by his presence in this vessel. His nasal cavity is leaking; it's repulsive, the mucus is revolting. His chest aches and his shoulders absolutely refuse to _be still_. He's curled up in the chair in a position he would never allow an underling to glimpse. It's far too vulnerable and obvious.

 

His eyes drip liquid that stings the wounds dotting his cheeks and nose and chin.

 

He has been here, in this chair, in this dimly lit room, in this hiding place, lonely with Gabriel's sword alone lighting his surroundings, for the past thirty-three hours.

 

He may not rise from his place until he releases the sword and allows the last portion of Gabriel's Grace to depart this world forever. He has sworn this to himself. Though he may break oaths at the drop of a halo, he has sworn upon his cause, and that he will not forsake. He swore too upon his love for Michael, but that is a frail and squalling thing he plans to drown before the end of all this.

 

He may not rise from his place with the sword still extant. He must rise, but he cannot, he will not, he is the sole reason the sword will die without the iron lung he has become these past weeks.

 

His eyes burn. He is fine. He is not crying, he is not, he is not, _he is not_. He is Lucifer, he is the first of the Fallen, he was the Morningstar, he was the light of God, he was the beauty of Creation alive to shine out over all his rays could illuminate, he was … he is … he is a murderer.

 

He had to do it, he didn't have a choice, what else could he have done? Gabriel would not join him, Gabriel would not move away – Gabriel stood against him. He had to do it, he had to …

 

Why does it hurt so much? He had no other option, no better plan – why then does it hurt so much to make the best of a bad thing? Why can he not stop feeling this rend in his chest for the murder of his closest younger brother?

 

 _He is not crying_.

 

His eyes overflow, and he admits it to himself, if no one else, that the tears he has choked on, ignored, denied, for so many hours already have won this war.

 

Lucifer does not want to be crying, but he is. He is weeping and he cannot make the sobs still, he cannot even lessen the volume of his wails.

 

|||||

 

Later, when Lucifer has not ceased crying for some excruciating five hours, a knock sounds on the door. It is quiet and timid, or it seems to be, but his sobs may distort his hearing.

 

Lucifer makes no answer to the knock. He is in no condition to see anyone.

 

“Luster-upon-cursed-pearls, may I come in?”

 

It's Aisling, it's always Aisling … no, she may not come in, he is not about to let anyone see this –

 

Quieter than before, so Lucifer has to strain to stop hiccuping and snorting and gurgling long enough to hear properly, Aisling continues. “I know what you're doing, teller of unhappy truths.”

 

He's throwing the door open and pulling her inside without thinking, telekinetic grip rough on her shoulder, slamming the door the second she's through it.

 

Aisling gasps when his face comes into view.

 

“And what, oh brilliant smoke slave, was I doing?”

 

He means to hiss it, low-pitched, quick and dangerous, a venomous snake of words, but his throat is sore and his nose is stuffy. It's a mispronounced whisper instead, and halfway through, 'smoke' gets caught and he coughs raucously.

 

“Grieving,” Aisling whispers back, staring at him, wide-eyed. She's frozen like a deer – rabbits freeze only for a moment, then sprint away in parabolic leaps – she hasn't moved an inch from where he left her inside the doorway.

 

He's pasting a jaunty smile, a showman's, salesman's, oily-sleek smile atop his grimace; he's mustering a blearily average tone.

 

This isn't going to work, but he tries it anyway. “What gave you that impression?”

 

Aisling has the sense not to answer that. She does at length get out of the shadow of the door, coming to sit at his feet, barely inside the faint sphere of light Gabriel's sword gives off, visible in the dark.

 

There is a long quiet. Lucifer stifles each sob until he chokes on it, then besieges his body to hold in the resultant hiccup, then fights not to burp after he swallows the hiccup's air. He does this again and again, pretending Aisling is not here, yet clearly reacting to her presence. After he wins a battle against a stalwart hiccup and makes a noise somewhere between gargling blood and expelling a chicken bone, Aisling intervenes.

 

“Here,” she mutters, proffering a warm, dark cylinder and a wrapper of white wax paper. “I brought sweet tea and fresh chocolate chip cookies.”

 

Lucifer turns only his eyes to look at her. He raises an eyebrow. She flushes and looks down.

 

“Maybe some tissues first? I have those too,” she defers, speaking to his shoes.

 

He knows she isn't looking, but he raises the other eyebrow anyway.

 

“Look, I've been expecting this since I saw you come back covered in blood three weeks ago, okay?”

 

He grunts. “How?”

 

“How did I know?” Aisling queries. It's such a stupid question Lucifer makes no response.

 

“You were carrying a sword. You didn't have it when you went out earlier.”

 

Lucifer creates a noise best described as a 'snargle.' It is not exactly a snort, a giggle, a huff, a gargle, or a sniff, but it is similar to all of them.

 

The snargle has the intended effect. Aisling elaborates, quieter, but more enunciated. She seems to recognize he wants none of her waffle or verbal curtsies; that or the shock makes her forget.

 

“You had blood everywhere else, but not the scabbard or the hilt or even the guard.”

 

Keen eyes, noticing that. None of the other demons had. Or at least none of them had said anything. Those were not the same, were they.

 

“It wasn't your sword. You would never hold it in its scabbard like that. But you cared about whosever's sword it was, because you kept it completely clean.”

 

Aisling is more observant than he gave her credit for. It must be a product of being sent to spy on his various enemies for centuries. She has a lot of practice watching angels.

 

“It was some sibling of yours. That is definitely an angel's blade.”

 

It's no wonder she knows that, she can probably feel that, just as he can feel it when the demons are near him. They pollute his mental landscape like plastic in burning hair.

 

“The only way you'd get another angel's blade is if they gave it to you, or you took it after you killed them. Either way, if you still have it they must be dead. It's been over two weeks. They would have reclaimed it by now.” Aisling finishes her explanation, voice high as always, but level and controlled. Her conclusions are sound, well-reasoned, and simple.

 

Aisling knows too much from basic deduction. How much do his other minions know?

 

His mounting anxiety is interrupted by Aisling speaking again.

 

“Can I tell you a story about family dying?”

 

What? Can she what? Yes, he supposes so; Lucifer flaps a hand to say, go on, I have no feelings one way or the other, I am apathetic. Aisling produces now a packet of tissues, which she presses into his left hand, and into his right she shoves the cylinder that he sees is a tall, lidded mug full of black tea.

 

Aisling settles into a more comfortable pose, leaning against his legs in a solidly warm manner, and begins to speak. “I lived as a human a very long time ago. Well, for me it has been a very long time, though I suppose to you it's just like a day …”

 

All the emotion drips out of Aisling. She reclines as if he has become a lounge chair on a pool deck, comfortably cool from the shade of the building behind her, large amber-brown sunglasses covering half her face, swimsuit, too small to swim in, laced up her sides, fruity iced drink perspiring in the heat, and the swish-plop-burble of the harmonic curves in the water draw Lucifer down to the fancy sloping beach entrance …

 

“I lived in a beautiful, green country, where people prospered. Or at least my people did. I was born in a small village, so small I can't remember its name anymore. I don't remember a lot, really, not after spending nearly four hundred years in Hell for initiation.”

 

As Aisling's words are true but not necessarily objective fact, Lucifer's memories are truths but not necessarily exactly what happened. He looks back on them with a lens of disappointment, rage, purpose, blame, loss, and that creeping modernity which slunk inside his soul sometime when he wasn't looking. Well, his Grace, at any rate.

 

-

 

_Once Lucifer and Michael spent the day at the beach. Lucifer wanted to go to the pool instead, but Michael liked sand. He claimed the miniature abrasions it created were nice, that they exfoliated his skin, leaving him new and fresh afterwards. Lucifer thinks that is a little odd, but Michael has his little oddities._

 

_The sun shines brightly in the sky, warm on Lucifer's back as he lies on a fluffy beach towel. Beach towels, he's found, are normal towels but larger and patterned strangely. This beach towel has seashells, most of them stylized beyond the point of technical accuracy. Lucifer tries not to care about the little imperfections._

 

-

 

“We didn't speak this English, I know that. And when I was very small I was terrified of fairies in the hills and monsters in the bogs, but not bears, foxes, wolves, or snakes. I didn't fear snakes until Alastair realized I'd never seen one and was kind enough to introduce us.”

 

-

 

_Michael is at his side, at his left side, he is on Michael's right. Michael's beach towel is larger still than Lucifer's, which is considerably huge, given that Lucifer's beach towel keeps his wings off the burning sand._

 

_The sand is yellow-white, rough and bumpy. The grains are big and many of them are just actually pebbles, not sand grains at all, what terrible masquerade costumes they brought._

 

_Michael and Lucifer are stretched out on a flat strip of ground fifteen feet out from the high tide water line. They would face the water, if they weren't facing each other, eyes closed to doze in the late morning beams. Their wings are entangled, overlapping, tickling the other but not themselves, causing a constant low flutter and twitch that makes a nice breeze fan over them._

 

_Why, Lucifer drowsily considers, does Michael have so enormous a beach towel when it is Michael who likes sand?_

 

-

 

“My mother was a quiet woman who never lifted a finger to help me.”

 

-

 

_They set up this comfort in the early hours of dawn: beach towels, flimsy umbrellas uselessly far away, and an oversized canvas bag, stuffed with various and sundry things Lucifer didn't bother to catalogue; it was dawn, for Michael's sake._

 

_Lucifer had protested – it's not like we're going fishing, Michael, it's the beach, it will be there all day – but Michael was adamant, Michael was molded steel._

 

_Rosy pink bloomed from the wild grasses breaking through dunes at the beach's edge when the two angels walked down to the “perfect sunbathing site,” or so Michael claims. Really, what expertise would Michael have at determining where best to see the sun, that Lucifer would not know better? It is Lucifer who is the shining Morningstar, Lucifer whose brightness broke the inky sky to greet new day._

 

_Ah, but wait … this is that morning, this is the last morning alone, truly alone, with Michael …_

 

-

 

“My father's name was Eoghan.”

 

-

 

_Lucifer sinks deeper into the sand, and Lucifer recalls that oh yes, it is only the two of them, it is, just Michael and Lucifer, so Lucifer is not Lucifer, not now and not yet, he is Helel … his Father named him … Helel, the shining one, star of the morning, son of the dawn … he never really changed so much, did he … how different is 'light-bringer' … now is not the time, it is different enough, now he has Michael in the sand at his side, now he is Helel._

 

_-_

 

“I had no brothers or sisters, but I had aunts and uncles, plenty of cousins, and two close friends. They were Saibh and Muirgen. Muirgen was named specially, because her parents found her on the beach one morning. She washed up from the sea, and we never knew who had sent her adrift.”

 

-

 

_Today is the day Gabriel will be made. Lucifer's Father will make him and swiftly bring him to Michael and Lucifer. For now, until they arrive, shadows and cold lines on his wings, Helel is happy._

 

_Michael is just Michael, he is not the commander yet, he is only the only brother Helel has ever had. Helel knows Michael is his brother, though he is not sure what 'brother' means. Before he was made there was no such thing as a 'brother,' but then Father made him and there was._

 

-

 

“I couldn't read or write, and I couldn't sing. I was pretty, I suppose, but in the wrong way. My hair was too like the sun, they said, it blinded men to the ugliness of my heart.”

 

-

 

_Helel's hair is sunlight curving round and round his head. He doesn't particularly care about the style or the color, but Michael appreciates golden curls to reflect Helel's gleaming halo._

 

_Against Helel's wings Michael shifts, settles back to the same position, sighs. Helel receives the message clearly without words or speech. It is a nice day, means Michael, and I am content here and now. Helel agrees._

 

_Michael likes the beach, so Helel learns to. He wishes still for less sand; it's accumulating in strange crevices, like the dip where his wings meet his back. He'll never get it all out, it feels like._

 

-

 

“I guess I did have an ugly heart. I still do now.”

 

-

 

_Helel lets the world fall away around him in the warm sun. All that is is this. He is bonelessly relaxed and he is by Michael's side. Sand is of no consequence. He ignores the sand until it doesn't exist for him._

 

_-_

 

“My father was an honorable man in an honorable time, according to his friends. But my father was also what is now recognized as an alcoholic.”

 

-

 

_United they nap until Helel snores, Michael jerks at the new sound, the motion pulls on their entwined limbs, Helel yanks back his twinging wings then rolls up to discover the source of the confusion, and sees that Michael is lying on his back now, blinking in sleepy confusion._

 

_'What?' Helel demands. 'What is it? What happened?'_

 

_'Did you know you snore?' Michael redirects, a lazy glance roving up to Helel's own alert stare._

 

_Helel is thrown off. 'No I don't,' he asserts. His wings flex, oscillate in time with the ocean._

 

_'Mmm, yes, you do,' Michael replies, rotating to lie on his side, looking toward Helel. 'You always have.'_

 

-

 

“It wasn't uncommon, then, for a man to beat his wife or children. They needed to learn to obey him, learn their place. Well, my father beat my mother and me, but only when he was drunk.”

 

-

 

_Helel doesn't really care if Michael thinks he snores, because Helel knows the truth, which is that he does not. Still, ruffled at the displacement, he curls up on his beach towel, shading his eyes with the edge of a wing. Michael chuckles, reaching out to tug Helel's wing higher and shield his left ear too._

 

_'You'll get burned if you're not careful,' Michael chides._

 

_'You're the one who burns,' Helel huffs, but his mouth betrays him, curling up._

 

-

 

“If it had been done sober, he might have known to stop before breaking bones or disfiguring us.”

 

-

 

_When Michael is clearly forgiven the terrible affront of claiming Helel snores, the two return to peaceful enjoyment. Maybe half an hour later Michael speaks on the wind._

 

_'I'm sorry about your wings,' the migrating air rushes into Helel's hearing. 'I didn't mean to hurt you.'_

 

_Helel could send back a gale of acceptance. Instead he concentrates and moves one muscle only. A wing-tip brushes the line of Michael's carotid artery and the circular protrusion at the end of a jaw bone. Michael twitches. The wing-tip passes the end of Michael's nose and flashes down his jugular. Michael's shoulder flinches up, down. Helel's wing-tip pokes Michael's ear, and Michael loses the game. Michael giggles._

 

_Helel is on him, everywhere, Michael's sides, his feet, the backs of his knees, his ears, Michael is giggling, yelping, roaring with laughter, the first-made is ludicrously ticklish for so dignified a being – Michael's laughter draws out Helel's own snickers at the victory and the sight before him._

 

_He's distracted enough that Michael turns the tables, and Helel's snickers become gasping laughs as he struggles to wriggle off of Michael. The two tumble and wrestle until something cold and wet slaps Helel's back and Helel shrieks in surprise and cold! Cold! Cold! That is so cold! Argh, wet, urgh, what is that –_

 

_Michael falls back into damp sand, perfect for mud pies or sandcastle mortar. Michael shakes, rolls about as though he's putting out a fire, laughs booming out into the open blue sky above. Helel has ended up in the water. That is seawater rushing in with the tide. Helel flushes. Yes, it is a beautiful thing to make Michael laugh by seeming scared of water. Fantastic._

 

-

 

“This was my childhood, and my girlhood, and then I was a woman grown. I had no husband or suitors, for I had learnt well to be vicious to any and all, save my two friends. Even Saibh and Muirgen, though, got the sharp side of my tongue whenever they mentioned my family.”

 

-

 

_Helel splashes Michael from his position in the shallows. Michael snorts and charges into the water, running slower as the level rises on him, splashing Helel right back. Helel returns the favor, propelling an incoming profusion of foam to knock Michael over and dunk his head. Michael comes up spluttering, then throws a jellyfish at Helel's head. Helel leans out of the way and flings a starfish at Michael's wings, dragging smoothly in the water as though the angels are manta rays flying under rippling waves. From there the wrestling match is rebegun in the ocean, and the sea sends echoing their amused shouts and trills of laughter to rebound upon the beach cove's cliffs._

 

_-_

 

“I had no land or money or husband. I had no future. I realized I would spend the rest of my short life getting hit.”

 

-

 

_They play for what may be hours or days or five minutes, Helel has no idea. Michael slows, and it takes Helel a minute to realize Michael isn't just tired or getting bored. Then he does realize, and laboriously makes his way through the cresting waves over to join Michael._

 

_He situates himself to Michael's left. Michael's right-handed: if Helel is on Michael's right, he'll be in the way of Michael's sword. His own sword is on the edge of his awareness. He can be left-handed for Michael; he could fight right-handed back-to-back with Michael. He doesn't need to ask for Michael to explain._

 

_'I don't think it's anything bad,' Michael reassures in a whisper the water carries far. 'I just felt something, that's all. Don't worry.'_

 

_Helel scowls around the cove their beach hides in. Michael says it's fine, but Michael hasn't relaxed. Michael's wings are tightly wound in position to launch. Helel's wings gradate into diamond feathers, a million prisms causing a million refracted rainbows to flow around them in place of shadows._

 

-

 

“That wasn't what I wanted, though, and eventually I was so angry with it all, all the beatings, all the times my mother didn't say a word to my father in my defense, all the times an aunt, a neighbor, a cousin would see the bruises on my face and look away, that I swore I would do anything to pay them all back.”

 

-

 

_Helel's searching for whatever Michael noticed. He sweeps the cove, one curved cliff, the beach, the dunes, another jutting crag, far-off open ocean with a trench drop off a thousand feet down, the cliff again, the beach again, the dunes again, the crag – the dunes again, the beach – his Father is on the beach. Father has something bright and squirming in his arms._

 

_Helel nudges Michael as Michael turns to see; Michael too can feel their Father and that bright bundle. Michael and Helel stride up out of the water onto hot dry sand that singes Helel's feet._

 

_Father smiles beatifically down at them. Father is taller than both Michael and Helel. Father is handsome, strong, glorious to behold. Helel sees Father as an angel with wings uncountable, a sun in space illuminating, body throwing more light still, outlined all around in brightness. Michael might not see that. Helel has never asked and has no plans to._

 

_“Hello, my sons,” Father says._

 

-

 

“I tried looking around the hills first. I hoped I might join a night revel with the fae, drink magical wine, and be unable to ever leave. I thought that couldn't be worse than life in my little village.”

 

-

 

_Father isn't using mind-speech like Helel and Michael use. He's speaking Enochian out loud. Quite why, Helel doesn't know, and doesn't care. That's just how Father has always spoken to them. Or so Helel hears it. Michael might not hear that._

 

_“Hello, Father,” Helel and Michael chorus._

 

_“I see you are enjoying the day,” Father says, quite kindly, looking down at the two angels._

 

_Helel wonders why Father is being unusually kind about this; what's wrong with it that he condescends to ignore? Perhaps they look silly. Helel glances at Michael and then at himself and understands. Their hair is mussed and matted with salt water; his halo is, somehow, hanging crooked; Michael has a starfish in a wing now soft and open; and there is sand and mud and the stink of fish absolutely everywhere. They do look and smell silly._

 

_“ – and the water is fun,” Michael finishes with a smile. Helel realizes Michael has been replying to their Father. Helel's mind was elsewhere._

 

_Helel hurries to contribute. “Yes, it is great fun, Father,” he offers up._

 

_Father speaks, “I am glad. Now here – ” He begins with a nod down to the bouncing bubble of light in His arms, but to Helel's shock He's interrupted by a squall._

 

_The wiggling mass is making high-pitched whines, each short and pointed. What is that, and why does Helel feel like the thing is hungry and should be fed right this moment now?_

 

-

 

“I never found any faeries.”

 

-

 

_“Alright, alright,” Father laughs gently, rocking the bundle. “Boys, this is your brother, Gabriel. Michael, take him while I make some food.”_

 

_Father hands Gabriel over to Michael, who unlike Helel has his arms open ready to receive the new angel. Michael settles Gabriel in his grasp, firm without crushing, and lets his wings wrap around Gabriel's tiny feathery puffs. Helel watches in awe._

 

_Father draws his hands together and apart. In the sand there is a low, carved wooden table and three woven reed mats. Father gestures at the place settings and Helel sits immediately. Michael takes more time to get to the ground without jostling Gabriel in his hold, all the while murmuring to the new one quiet reassurances of safety. Father sits only when Michael looks up at Him and smiles._

 

_There is a spread of food upon the table, but it is all intended for the new angel, Helel can tell. Everything is soft and light: rice pudding, mashed bananas, pulped peas and green beans, all made from nothing or cloud or air, who knows? Angels don't need to eat but the new one wants to, so they do._

 

-

 

“I kept looking for something, anything, anyone to help me. I never found it.”

 

-

 

_Michael shifts Gabriel on his lap. “New one, if you want some food you need to have a shape to eat it,” he suggests. “Manifest yourself.”_

 

_The light rustles in Michael's arms and its wings flutter rapidly. It does not resolve into a clearer form. Helel has a flash of inspiration; he's never dealt with new angels before but he might just know how._

 

_“Gabe,” he calls. The shortening feels right. He has Michael's and Father's attention now, but more importantly the squirming brightness that is his younger brother fixates on Helel._

 

_“Make yourself look like Michael and me,” he says. Not Father, even Michael doesn't exactly look like Father. “Want it very much. If you look like us you can have some pudding. Mmm, rice pudding … ” Helel serves himself some rice pudding with the serving spoon and plate he now has._

 

_Gabriel's focus follows Helel's hands as he scoops out pudding. The more of the rice pudding Helel takes, the more Gabriel's attention feels like Michael's incredulous eyes on him, and then it works._

 

_The intense glow of newness fades into the normal radiance of a typical angel. Gabriel is revealed on Michael's knee, small, round, wrinkled, pudgy, red-faced, newborn. For a second, at least, he is a newborn, then his head – so much heavier than Helel expects – wobbles up so he can see Michael's face. Then Gabriel ages. He looses redness from his face, expands in size to be round all over but not wrinkly, and brown hair, a color exactly between Michael's and Helel's, sprouts from his skull._

 

_Gabriel gives a new grin. It's toothless and wide-lipped and his eyes crinkle and he claps, and Helel's heart swells three sizes in that second._

 

-

 

“I heard from a traveling priest – we weren't a big enough village to have our own – that the Devil made bargains. You had to be wary, constantly, because otherwise you might sell your soul to a barman for another ale.”

 

-

 

_“Good job,” Helel coos, and he collects a tiny bit of pudding on a smaller, softer, rubber spoon._

 

_He leans into Michael, brings it to Gabriel's mouth, and Gabriel gums at it a bit clumsily, but together they succeed and Gabriel swallows down the portion. Gabriel claps his jaws open and shut a few times, his tongue roves around, and he looks off into the distance. He returns to Helel's face, still at Michael's shoulder, Helel choosing to ignore Michael and Father for a moment while he waits for Gabriel's verdict._

 

_Gabriel smiles again. His fluffy protuberances flap in excitement, and he reaches for the spoon in Helel's hand as if to say, more now. Helel obliges gracefully, feeding Gabriel patiently for the next several minutes, continuing while Michael speaks up._

 

_“You're good at that,” he comments. He's not doing anything but watching Helel spoon pudding into Gabriel's waiting maw. Gabriel is still secure in Michael's arms, of course, Michael balancing him neatly with wings and torso, his head supported by Michael's arm and chest._

 

_“Thanks,” Helel replies politely. It's gratifying. Michael's first effort didn't work because Michael might have raised Helel but Gabriel is not Helel. Admittedly Michael had no way to know they would not be similar in this regard._

 

_“You are indeed,” Father says. Helel doesn't look over at Him. Besides, he's already thanked them for the compliment. He dips his wings in acknowledgement._

 

_“Why did you call him 'Gabe'?” Michael asks. At the sound of the nickname Gabriel pauses his lunch to burble pleasantly at Michael, who looks down seriously and nods at him. “Yes, Gabriel, I was talking about you.”_

 

_Gabriel chitters at Michael, who blinks and glances at Helel and Father in question, but both shrug in incomprehension. Gabriel seems to believe that his message was received loud and clear, though, because he turns back to the spoon. Helel hasn't refilled it for wondering what Gabriel meant. When Gabriel finds it empty, he frowns and makes that short pointed whine. It grates on Helel, who scowls at the manipulation and fetches Gabriel more pudding._

 

_“Helel?” Michael repeats. Helel shakes his head to clear it._

 

_“Hmm? Oh, right, yes. 'Gabe' just seemed to fit. I don't know.”_

 

_Father's eyebrows meet, shake hands, exchange polite inquiries about their states of being, remark upon the recent nice weather, discover they attended the same summer camp in high school for marching band, date three times, marry while intoxicated, and sue for divorce. Helel counsels them to legally separate first and file proper papers, at which point he snaps back to himself and jumps to reassure his Father._

 

_“I like his name! I love it! 'Gabriel' is excellent! It's stupendous, it's amazing, honestly – ”_

 

_Father laughs and Helel is, if not forgiven, assured that his offense will be forgotten._

 

_“I do not mind the use-name, Helel. Have no fear. There is a certain ring to it.”_

 

_Helel is relieved. His wings unknot themselves and finally the diamond structure dissolves into soft feathers, today strewn with the reds of the dawn. He goes back to feed Gabriel, perhaps some bananas now the pudding is running low, but Gabriel's eyes are wide and his jaw is low, ignoring completely the spoon before him._

 

_Gabriel is staring at Helel's wings. Michael grins indulgently. “I know, new one, I feel the same way. I can change my wings, too, but Helel's are so much more interesting, aren't they?”_

 

-

 

“At first I never believed him. The priests were too new to get much credence.”

 

-

 

_Gabriel gives a wondrous nod, neck suddenly strong, head twisting up and down between Michael's face and Helel's wings. He twitters, gurgles, quickly, fascinated. Gabriel's hands rise, reach, and Michael shifts him in his arms to be closer to Helel. When Gabriel keeps reaching, Michael chuckles._

 

_“Okay, I get it. You want Helel. Give me a second, I'll hand you over.” What? Wait._

 

_Michael gathers up Gabriel and moves over to place him in Helel's lap. Helel nearly drops the pudding spoon in shock. What is Michael doing? Helel's never held a new angel, what if he drops Gabriel? What if he hurts him? What if Gabriel hits his head on the table or the ground? Is that bad for new angels? Helel's wings are shaking, red dawn vanished behind cloudy black storm clouds, feathers gathered mists._

 

_Michael takes the spoon and places it on the plate which had held pudding. He moves Gabriel slightly this way and that until Gabriel is comfortably situated. “Don't worry, it's fine,” Michael promises. “His head doesn't need support any more, I don't think. You won't drop him, and even if you did you're already sitting on the ground. He'll be fine. Come on, show him your wings, he just wants to see them better.”_

 

_Gabriel might not be Helel, but Michael has the experience required to be calm about this._

 

_Helel takes a deep breath and forces his wings to still. He's tense, storm clouds, mist, until he makes eye contact with Gabriel. Gabriel is unwavering in his faith in Helel. Confidence flows through him, and wings shrink down around Gabriel's puffy white feathered stumps. Storm clouds are red and pink dawn on the hilltops, mist is the scent of magnolias and the texture of springy green moss._

 

_He's careful, very careful, and moves only one muscle. Helel tickles Gabriel's wings as he tickled Michael, and he's restrained and holds back much, but it succeeds now just as it did then._

 

_Gabriel laughs and laughs and laughs, this new high bright giggling sound, and Helel laughs too in sheer, utter joy._

 

-

 

“Finally I said to myself, well, if that priest was wrong no harm done. It's worth a try.”

 

-

 

_Helel lifts Gabriel up, both hands large around Gabriel's tiny torso. He settles Gabriel into a seat on his forearm, where Helel's wings are much closer and more accessible. Gabriel claps and bats at them as soon as he can. Helel indulges the new one, splaying his wings for Gabriel to tug at and run his small hands through. When Gabriel's pulls are too hard Helel winces and pries Gabriel's fingers looser, hushing admonitions about gentleness. Gabriel's own baby wings flutter nonstop._

 

_While Helel amuses the new one, Michael turns to Father._

 

_“He is wonderful,” Michael says. He means it._

 

_Father nods. He watches Gabriel play with Helel. Michael, too, turns his attention to his younger brothers._

 

_Father clears His throat. Michael's eye flick back to Him. Father looks down. Michael's whole body turns back. Father scrutinizes the sea. Michael's wings fold in around him. His back straightens and his mouth flattens._

 

-

 

“I called up a demon, a crossroads demon I know now, though I never did learn its name. It was wearing a body which stood tall, slender, and generically male. The nest of hair upon its head I recall vividly, because it burned.”

 

-

 

_When five minutes have passed with no sign of speech, Michael starts. “Father?”_

 

_Father sighs._

 

_“Father, what is wrong?” Michael persists._

 

_“I need you to look after him for a while,” Father says. “I have cleaning in my workshop that needs doing, and he will be very bored. I also need to build. That might not be safe for any of you.”_

 

_Michael's flat mouth turns into a full mask of blankness. His wings, already still and compact, lose their luster and glare matte gray._

 

-

 

“It asked me, 'Child, do you want to make a deal?'

 

“I was exhilarated. At last, at last, I could really do this.

 

“I replied, 'Yes, I do.'

 

“The demon smiled. 'What do you want?' it asked me.”

 

-

 

_Helel's been listening. Until now he felt Gabriel was both more important and more interesting. But with Michael so repressed, furious, Helel supposes he ought to do something before there's an altercation. No one would benefit from that._

 

_“We can keep him safe,” Helel suggests. He and Michael are indeed more than able to watch over a single angel._

 

_Father smiles over at him. “Thank you. I knew I could count on you.”_

 

_Helel basks._

 

_“How long?” Michael grates out._

 

_Father looks sharply at Michael, but He speaks calmly. “A few weeks, at most.”_

 

_“He may not be new anymore after a few weeks.”_

 

_“He will be.” Father states. Omniscience. It's useful._

 

_Helel thinks they should stop scaring Gabriel now. “You were new for what, a decade, Michael? Even that is barely any time at all. I was still new for fifty years, remember? Gabe,” pause to let Gabriel chirp in response to his name, “will be new for at least a century if that pattern holds.”_

 

_“He can grow at any moment,” Michael murmurs. He gazes down at Gabriel with despair and premature sorrow etched into the curve of his cheek._

 

_Helel fluffs Gabriel with his wings. Gabriel smiles his baby smile, and Helel says, “He won't.”_

 

-

 

“I looked it right in the eye, and I said, 'I want the village behind me to die. Everything in it, tonight.'”

 

-

 

_Why Michael takes Helel's word but not Father's, he can't explain. He trusts._

 

_Maybe it's because Father has made a new angel, a new son, and left him in Michael's care – again. Not that Michael resents his siblings, Helel and Gabriel are perfect in his eyes, but Father should be there for them like He was for Michael._

 

_Helel supposes this is what's running through Michael's head. It certainly sounds like the resonance his Grace is projecting._

 

-

 

“It blinked at me, its smile lost. 'You wish them dead?'

 

“I looked at the ground. 'I would like to kill them myself, but I can't. I'd settle for all of their deaths.'

 

“Then the demon's smile found its face again, wider and redder than before. 'With such a request, I am happy to bind this contract,' it lapped out, speaking through a mouth suddenly fanged like a cat's.”

 

-

 

_Michael nods at Helel. “Okay. Okay.”_

 

_“Good,” Father says, and He lets sand flow up and around Him as He sinks into the cool layers below. Michael and Helel clearly don't mind the heat, and it's not going to hurt Him, but He appreciates the refreshing sensation._

 

_Michael looks at Father once more. Michael sighs, shakes his head, says, “We'll take good care of Gabriel, Father, I promise.”_

 

_Michael has said nearly the same thing once before. This time, even as the last time, his Grace warms him within to swear such things. He strides over to the waves, gesturing for Helel to bring Gabriel down to the water's edge. Michael loves water and it is one of the first things he taught Helel._

 

_Helel hesitates and Father is suddenly attentive to him. “Helel?” Michael calls, pausing._

 

_It's not that he doesn't want to play with Michael and Gabriel in the water. It's not that he isn't willing to share Michael's time with Gabriel. It's just … well, the ocean is sandy everywhere and cold and the salt stings his eyes and when the salt dries on him his wings feel tight, stretched, abruptly painful and uncomfortable by turns. And Gabriel is so new, is it really a good idea to take him into that? Besides, the tides, the current, the undertow might scare or endanger Gabriel._

 

_It feels like Father's view of him is shifting and Helel has no idea how he can tell that from the sense of being watched by small dark eyes on his back. Is this a choice he has to make? Is there a test he's unaware of?_

 

_Helel is conflicted. He wants to not be in the sand anymore, though he has truly enjoyed today, but using Gabriel to get him out of the sand feels wrong. It isn't wrong, though, is it, when he's just trying to protect the new one. Gabriel might not do well at the beach, there may be sharks in the water or a crab that pinches him, Helel has no desire to hear the new one scream and cry._

 

_It isn't wrong. Helel is doing the right thing here._

 

_“Perhaps the ocean is not the safest place for Gabriel right now,” Helel eventually says. Gabriel hums loudly at his name._

 

_Michael frowns. He's considering that. His wings blur around him as he shifts from standing in the swell to standing next to Helel._

 

_Gabriel, from Helel's arms, is concentrating on Helel's wings still. Michael observes him as he flutters his own wings repeatedly, getting more and more excited. Gabriel's little wings are white and very fine fluff, proportioned for his body now, but he's shaking them faster and faster, and then to the collective astonishment of Michael and Helel, Gabriel's wings are speckled gold. They match Helel's hair._

 

_Michael blinks. “While that is impressive, you may be right, Helel. What should we do instead if not show Gabriel the sea?”_

 

_“Well … ” Helel draws out. This cannot seem too quick, he cannot seem to plan this. “We could, hmm … I suppose … maybe we could teach Gabe to swim after all.”_

 

_“How?”_

 

_“Pools are less dangerous for the unwary and the young,” Helel points out._

 

_Michael's mouth moves into a thinking frown. He's not upset, he's just ruminating. “That is very true,” he says. “And it would be nice to teach him to swim. The pool it is, I think. Besides which, pools don't involve sand.”_

 

_Michael winks at Helel, and Helel knows that Michael knows what he did but Michael agreed with him, Helel wasn't doing the wrong thing, Michael thought it was fine._

 

_Father expels air with surprising volume. All three of His sons turn to Him, but Father does not say anything. He buries His head in His hands, and to Helel's sight the multitude of wings He has shudder and lay wrapped around Him in a self-hug._

 

_Michael wants to say something, Helel is confused, and Gabriel is pouting, but Father puts up a hand to stop them all. He sits up straight and shakes His head, and His children know He will not explain._

 

_Michael thought it was fine. Helel suspects Father did not. Furthermore Helel suspects Father is bothered that Michael, Michael who knew, supported Helel despite that._

 

-

 

“It stepped closer to me. 'For the price of your immortal soul, child, I will give you the power to kill every living thing in the village behind you.'”

 

-

 

_Helel soldiers on. He has made his choice and he will deal with the fallout personally, here meaning he will go to the pool with his brothers and his Father will want him around even less. Which is difficult to imagine, considering that Father wanted him around so little already that he had been practically given to Michael to raise and Father had seen him for perhaps ten percent of Helel's life. In comparison, when Michael was new Father was there all the time, and even now Father visits Michael often._

 

_Helel resettles Gabriel in his arms for easier transport. The change brings the top of Gabriel's head just under Helel's chin and he impulsively kisses the crown of Gabriel's hair and his tiny golden halo. His own action makes him grin, pleased, and sniff the new one, who smells like nothing he has smelled before but delights his nose and hindbrain._

 

_When he looks up to ask if Michael is ready to go, Michael is staring at him. A strange composure decorates his elder brother's face. Something glints in his eyes; some buried longing slithers out to curl about. It's not sad, not a lament, more a secret unconscious wish for the future. Helel is baffled and raises both eyebrows and wings in question._

 

_Michael snaps out of it and pretends not to see the confusion Helel broadcasts. He gives Father a parting bow of his head and murmurs, “Goodbye.”_

 

_Helel offers his own farewell politely and Gabriel waves a chubby fist. That brings brief joy to their Father's expression, which has again elected to be intriguing and inscrutable. Helel discerns resignation, budding muted contentment, and threads of pity, sympathy, but no empathy. There's more in that face and Helel doesn't know what it is, nor can he make sense of what he does see._

 

_They leave. Michael leads and Helel carries Gabriel securely._

 

-

 

“I stepped closer too. 'I accept your deal,' I said.”

 

-

 

_They have left Father sitting on that beach alone. Does Father ever get lonely? Besides His three children, the only other being Helel is aware exists is Death, who Helel does not imagine spends much of his time socializing with Father. Though maybe the two are friends._

 

_-_

 

“To my surprise, the demon kissed me, and when it pulled away I could taste its blood on my mouth.”

 

-

 

_At the pool Gabriel is initially wary of getting in the water, but once Michael proves it's entirely safe, he dives out of Helel's arms and splashes absolutely everywhere with a cannonball. Spluttering, wiping his eyes and shaking out his wings, Helel is torn between an impulse to splash Gabriel right back and an urge to snatch the new one out of the water this second because can Gabriel swim? Is Gabriel keeping his head above water? Is Gabriel okay?_

 

_Gabriel is, of course, fine. Michael was there to catch him, and new does not mean infantile or ignorant or stupid or oblivious or weak or helpless. New is only new._

 

_Helel squashes the irrational panic and jumps in carefully. He doesn't land on either brother, but he does land close enough to pelt both with tidal waves of displaced liquid. Together the three of them spend a hilarious time at the pool, Gabriel displaying rapid growth each time his older brothers blink, or so it seems._

 

_When they've been at the pool for probably days already Gabriel yawns. His gaping mouth has a tooth cutting through the lower gum that wasn't there two hours prior. Helel is slightly surprised Gabriel hasn't cried about it yet, but he isn't about to push his luck. Michael sees it too, and shares a look with Helel that says clearly: do not mention it. Helel nods his acquiescence and scoops the new angel up. If Gabriel is tired he should sleep. Much like eating, angels do not need to – or Helel and Michael never have – but if the new one wants to, he will. Michael demonstrates two methods for drying off wings: rapid fluttering that induces a cold breeze to blow the drips off or stretching out heated Grace that evaporates the droplets._

 

_Michael leads the path again, and again Helel brings Gabriel securely in his hold. Michael takes them back to the bower Helel and Michael share. It is one, not two joined to be one but truly one, because it has never occurred to Michael or Helel to have separate bowers. Michael warps the bower to produce a sleeping space for Gabriel. While Helel is loathe to call it a nest or a perch, it is rather like a mixture of the two. It's a soft cot suspended in the air with space for Gabriel to stretch out his wings. Michael knows not to put in pillows or blankets yet – Gabriel cannot smother but the concept induces a Grace-deep terror he shudders to suppress – so he lines the bed with feathers he plucks from Helel and himself, for warmth and comfort._

 

_Gabriel nuzzles down into the nest-perch and yawns again, curling his small fingers into patches of donated wing. His eyes close and his breathing evens, but his wings remain speckled gold and his hands do not relinquish their grip on his brothers' feathers._

 

_Helel and Michael stand watch for a long while. They say nothing, but Helel sings in his consciousness and he's rather certain Michael hears, because soon Michael begins to hum the tune in time with Helel's nonverbal ditty._

 

-

 

“Then I hugged it, and I suppose it was shocked, because it squawked like a parrot. I was so happy to be finally able to make them all hurt too.”

 

-

 

_Father returns for Gabriel some month or so later. Michael lets his pleasure at the late-but-fulfilled promise flare out in his eyes when he answers the knock at the door. Helel is envious, maybe, of the kind of devotion that would bring his Father to raise a son._

 

_Michael and Helel are granted many more opportunities to care for Gabriel over the years of his newness. Once Gabriel has learned to crawl on his own Michael urges him to stand and in short order it is Michael who teaches Gabriel to walk. A week later Father comes to gather up the youngest. His face when Gabriel walks across the meadow to cling to his leg is proud such as Helel has never seen before._

 

_The next time they babysit, Helel allows Gabriel to have two weeks of walking, but then it is Helel who teaches Gabriel to fly. The brothers three race in the air, Michael on swift wings, Helel craftily supporting Gabriel so that it is Gabriel who wins in the end. Michael and Helel cheer and congratulate him, and Gabriel claps and cries out, “Again! Again!”_

 

_As they trudge back to the beginning of the racetrack, Helel thinks on all that Gabriel has chosen to learn from his older brothers. New angels are new only so long as the choose to be, and their growth is as they will it, exactly as Gabriel had very suddenly not been an infant anymore so that he could look more like Michael. Gabriel is not adult and mature now, but only by his own volition. Helel is honored to be trusted as this continued newness proves._

 

_Helel does teach Gabriel much and Michael even more, but Helel thinks Gabriel creates a great deal on his own. Already Gabriel has a knack for warping things and breathing movement, false life, into illusions. Yet it was Helel who taught Gabriel to draw an illusion at first, Helel who explained the use of double bodies in strategy, Helel who prompted Gabriel's first word and immediately thereafter his first sentence: “Pudding?” Gabriel had asked, with big brown eyes and gold wings. “Can I have pudding please brother?”_

 

_What was Helel supposed to say to that except certainly, right now, let me make some?_

 

_Gabriel meet their Father at the door this time. He chatters on at such speed that Father's eyebrows rise in brief confusion. Michael and Helel had discovered that once Gabriel began to speak he did not wish to cease. At all. Even while asleep._

 

_They also discover that Gabriel loves nicknames and uses them frequently. Helel is Lel, Michael is Mike, and to Michael and Helel's great and needless worry, Father is Dad._

 

-

 

“I turned around and walked back to my little village in that green country. I spent the next four hours slaughtering everything in it, some of it literally slaughtering, the way you should slaughter pigs. I could tell you how each one of them died, I remember every smell, every little expression, but that's another long story. Long story short, none of them died well, I got inventive, and it ruined my dress. That was when I learned burning bloody clothes is the best way to go. Some things just don't come out of fabric, like blood, or grass stains, or kidneys.”

 

-

 

_One day Helel returns from a distant star – he'd had a want to learn the tango and stars make the best dance partners Helel knows – Gabriel is visiting Michael and it truly is a visit, not a sitting, because Gabriel is grown._

 

_His new little brother is all grown up! Helel is torn between joy and sorrow sweet._

 

_Ignoring both frustrations, he greets his brothers and the three share an evening where Gabriel feigns that he does not see Michael and Helel's slight discomfort on his sudden lack of newness, Michael acts as if he has no problems, and Helel's wings shiver each time he looks away and back at Gabriel, suddenly caught by the reminder that Gabriel is now an adult._

 

_When Gabriel gives up this fox and retreats to his castle with his hounds, Helel catches him with wings raised for flight at the door._

 

_'One question,' Helel blurts out._

 

_Gabriel smiles, and this smile is not the wide toothless smile Helel knew so well, this stretches only half his mouth and crooks to make the whole expression barely the far side of a smirk._

 

_'Sure,' he offers._

 

_Helel has always been curious, about everything and nothing. 'Why new and then old? Why never adolescent?'_

 

_Gabriel laughs a quiet huffing laugh, and Helel reels inside because that laugh says he will never understand in Gabriel's eyes. 'Can you imagine me with pimples? Come on. I'm already short. Besides, maybe I wanted to be something other than the baby of the family.'_

 

-

 

“I stood naked under the stars and closed my eyes. I savored the smell of the dead and the nice quiet evening.”

 

-

 

_Gabriel is not the last angel to be made. Next is Raphael, who wails like nothing Gabriel ever sounded like even when he tried, but who also finds Gabriel's face hiding game to be the funniest thing in Creation. Helel sometimes, privately, never for very long, really it doesn't count and Raphael is his younger brother he's practically required – Helel sometimes thinks Raphael is a bit of a brat. But then Gabriel was too from time to time, and either way Raphael is the new one. Brat, maybe; brother, yes._

 

_Gabriel spends two days with Raphael before announcing that Raphael is now officially Raph._

 

_Another new one, a sister now; then another sister; then a sibling. Of those three Helel sees quite little. Father is around much more to raise Raphael and those who follow than He was for even Gabriel. It's just Helel He didn't want anything to do with._

 

_More and more and more siblings appear. Father makes angels left and right and sideways. When Father makes the eighth angel and Azrael is specialized, unique, the angel of death packaged complete with her twin the ninth angel, the angel of destruction, she is not as the first seven are. She is Helel's sister but she is lesser all the same, and Father calls those first seven 'archangels' and Helel is filled with a rush of pride. Gabriel ignores his Dad's fancy proclamation and crushes the twins in a hug which they promptly shove their way out of. It's later revealed that neither Azrael nor Abaddon adores their new nicknames: Azy and Aby._

 

_Father makes new angels in big bunches after that. Not singular or twinned only, but clutches, litters, schools, murders, kisses, flocks, flights, swarms, streaks, nests, herds, colonies, troops, droves, armies, clowders, broods, bands, packs, pods, mobs, gangs, gaggles, charms, quivers, prides, fleets, scourges, huddles, exaltations, leaps, casts, parliaments, chatterings, hatches._

 

_It's frankly impossible to successfully con them all into believing he knows each and every one of their names, let alone actually know all those names. He knows many, very many, and if he's given the chance to think he probably can guess a name or a purpose correctly, but it's not an exact science._

 

_That's the thing about all the newbies. Father gave them names and purposes. Take, for example, his baby brother Raphael, who is precisely what his name suggests, the healer, or his baby sister Achaiah, who governs and embodies patience. Gabriel has been promised a purpose and Michael has been declared the commander of the hosts of Heaven._

 

_The newest ones are never new for long. Not that angels are ever helpless or weak or children, but Helel had more of a childhood than most he sees now, and that stitches something shut, because he can feel the tugs of the thread pulling at his skin and the ache of the puncture wound beneath._

 

_-_

 

“Then the crossroads demon came to get me with a pack of hellhounds. I hadn't known most people ask for a ten year delay in their deals, and I had done nothing of the sort.”

 

-

 

_So many angels need more than a nest-perch in Michael and Helel's home. They create bowers for each sibling and spend easily a decade working out the complex rules governing how, when, why to attach two bowers and make them as one._

 

_The first four are sparring on the newly laid training fields in front of newly formed garrisons when Gabriel, innocently, asks why Helel was never given his own bower._

 

_'I mean, I get that you guys share,' Gabriel pants, dodging a high horizontal slash from Michael, 'but really, when you get right down to it, Lel's crashing at Mike's place all the time. How do you guys stand that? Don't you want your own space?'_

 

_Helel blocks a rather poorly timed stab from Raphael and considers the notion. When next Gabriel and Raphael distract one another with an obvious ploy to take out Helel and Michael simultaneously, the eldest share an uncertain moment wherein Helel can't read Michael for what may be the first time, and he assumes that must mean Michael does want his own space._

 

_Well, if Michael wants to, they can split up, he'll just move out …_

 

_The next day Michael and Helel make a new bower, then spend the rest of the day apportioning their things. Who gets Gabriel's nest-perch? Who takes the couch?_

 

_Helel, on both counts._

 

_Two weeks pass and Helel is so miserable alone he goes to Michael to beg him to let Helel come home. Michael greets him at the door with thanks to their Father in relieved tears, and soon drools on Helel's shoulder because Michael has been unable to sleep these two weeks._

 

_Michael doesn't need to sleep, but he's gotten used to it because of Gabriel's proclivities, and going without was unpleasant to say the least. Helel breathes Michael in through his hair, sits on their couch in their newly rejoined bower, and smiles._

 

_It is, of course, never the same after. Two joined bowers as one are not one. It's practically the same thing, it shouldn't make any difference, they ought to just go back to the way they were, but it's not quite, it does, and they can't._

 

_-_

 

“Most people cry, scream, claw the floor to get away from the dogs, and the dogs tear their human bodies to shreds pulling that soul down, still kicking and wailing. Not me. They didn't have to drag me. With my village dead I didn't much care what happened. I went with them willingly.”

 

-

 

_Father's promise to Gabriel is fulfilled. He is named Father's messenger. Gabriel will speak with the voice of Heaven behind him whensoever he chooses now. Gabriel is not 'the voice of God,' as that is a position not a purpose and Metatron is a title quite neatly placed upon Joshua, but Gabriel carries the word of God with him and his speech rings with Heavenly weight – truths Gabriel announces are truer than other truths. The concept is fascinating and so very Gabriel, who loves wordplay and things like lexicons and syntax and morphology._

 

_The first time Helel hears Gabriel speak with the voice of truth, he instinctively believes every single syllable Gabriel utters, despite their ludicrous nature. 'Raphael is scared of spiders.'_

 

_The first time Helel hears Gabriel speak with the voice of Heaven, he is touched by Grace-deep comfort and never looks at Gabriel the same way again. 'We are a family.'_

 

_Helel never hears Gabriel speak with the voice of annunciation or sees Gabriel present the word of God._

 

_-_

 

“I'm not sure what happened to my little village after I left. I certainly never buried any of the bodies. They probably rotted away in the sun or got eaten by crows.”

 

-

 

_Helel does, you know, love the kid sibs and all that. Honest. No, but honestly honest, he does._

 

_However, their sheer abundance cuts into the time he spends with Michael. Helel can't recall when he last got to just sit alone with Michael, not even for a second._

 

_Helel does not resent this. If he repeats that often enough he might sound convincing when Gabriel or Raphael inevitably calls him on it. He practices in front of reflective metal._

 

_-_

 

“In Hell I was sent to Alastair early on. My soul-broker had made sure everyone in charge knew exactly what I had sold my soul for. Apparently requesting the power to murder everyone I knew made me a prime candidate for becoming a demon. So Alastair groomed me personally. He always appreciated a good massacre.”

 

-

 

_What is his purpose?_

 

_Helel is haunted by ghosts. He cannot turn a corner or close an eye without apparitions clawing at him or screaming from gashed open throats. Metaphorically._

 

_He is stalked by the questions of why was he made? What is he meant to do? What should he be? And why won't Father tell him? What is Father hiding?_

 

-

 

“Demons don't make friends, they make enemies and alliances. The closest you can come to cordial relations is making deals, and somebody has to lose. The thing about deals is they are never truly fair to both sides. They seem like it, but they aren't. Not in the end.”

 

-

 

_Helel does not suit him. Lucifer is better._

 

_Gabriel calls him Luce and Lucifer privately reflects that if Gabriel ever refers to him with any variant of Luci or Lucey or Luciferous or Luce-a-doodle – he knows his brother – Lucifer will be forced to designate Gabriel 'princess Gabriella the third of marshmallow town, reigning lady of gaudy necklaces.'_

 

_Michael always, always, hesitates before he says 'Lucifer.' Michael wants to say Helel. Lucifer is not Helel anymore and Michael doesn't really know why, and Lucifer can't explain it, and when he tries to tell Michael that it's complicated, Michael essentially explodes._

 

_While Michael flees to sulk by sinking himself further into this stupid commander crap, Lucifer retreats, as un-tactically as possible, to their bower. He spends two hours pacing, mulling over worries that Michael won't want to keep their bowers joined and it'll be like those terrible two weeks all over again._

 

_Lucifer brings himself out of that unproductive anxiety by slamming his head painfully against the wall. Several times. He leaves red drips on the floor molding and gray streaks on the paint. It helps. He can think again. He can see it now._

 

_Of course Michael doesn't get it. Of course. Michael will lead the army, but Helel, Helel, oh, he will not be a part of that army, he will not be lieutenant general to his brother, he will be on the other side. That is Lucifer's purpose. He will end it all in fire and ice, because Grace may be flames but he burns cold._

 

-

 

“I think I won my deal with that crossroads demon. My soul was less of a price than I could have paid, looking back with what I know now. And it might just be that now I can't see soul-selling as wrong, but I don't regret anything I did to get here.”

 

-

 

_Lucifer is Lucifer and he is not Helel. Not anymore. Not now. No, now he is himself again._

 

His head breaks the surface. He shakes it off. Droplets fly off dripping hair; the sodden vestigial vanity covers his eyes. He brushes the curls away. Oh, no, not curls, not really … Nick doesn't have curly hair …

 

That's right, he's wearing Nick. He is out and about on the town on the prowl on the hunt for a dashing new suit! He is here and he is now and he has stopped crying.

 

Looking back, sane, it's funny how little of what he remembered was as it had actually been. Case in point: before their father had shaped the earth, where might he and Michael have gone to the beach? Nowhere with sands like that existed then. Honestly, sometimes his imagination runs wild as a herd of horses. Moreover, the realization of his destiny and the formation of his rebellion against his father were not based solely on one fight with Michael. His older brother might be very important, but Lucifer has never had an unhealthy fixation on him, and the war Lucifer fought was not some petty spat.

 

-

 

“So you see, I know a bit about dead family. I killed mine too.”

 

Lucifer jolts out of Aisling's tale and almost spills the both of them to the ground in his flail. Aisling's looking up at him when he looks down and they agree, wordlessly, to never mention that undignified moment again. Can he be graceless mucky grit on the streets that sticks in the tread of cheap new shoes, certainly; will he ever do so without meaning to, not a chance.

 

Aisling waits politely for him to gather himself. He does so as quickly as he can; she keeps distracting him by not moving away. She's sitting at his feet, leaning on his legs, and it's so strange to have someone actually touch him – well, his vessel, but she knows it's a vessel, it's his vessel – he has trouble focusing.

 

He succeeds. “It's no wonder why you make a good demon. You have experience.”

 

“Don't change the subject,” Aisling chides. She earns herself a weak red-rimmed glare. She flushes slightly.

 

“What subject?” He can be as obtuse as he likes.

 

“Killing family!”

 

“Oh, that. Right, well, good for you.”

 

Aisling almost smacks Lucifer's knee, but stops herself in time. He raises both eyebrows and she pastes on a fake grin then pats his leg gingerly. She sighs and drops the faux grin. “I meant, you don't need to be so broken up about it. Family isn't always family.”

 

“What?” Tautology is tautology.

 

Aisling says, “Being related to someone by blood doesn't mean they're family, because being a family is about loving and supporting one another, you know, being there for each other. Blood doesn't always do that, and correct me if I'm wrong, but your blood relatives have been pretty harsh on you.”

 

There's not much he can say to that. Though 'blood relatives' is relative here, given that angels don't actually have blood.

 

She continues. “They're not your family. We are. Demons. We love you. We support you. You're not alone in this.”

 

He would rather be alone than have demons call him family. This is pathetic and creepy, not touching. Hell clearly warped her.

 

He tries the tea so she can't expect him to talk. It's very sugary, and lukewarm now. He heats it. The billowing steam settles in Aisling's hair, which frizzes unattractively. She apparently straightens her body's hair. Why does he know that? He doesn't care about that. The tea isn't bad though.

 

Aisling reaches up to curl her hand around his. She looks right into his eyes with her own held wide and earnest. “You don't have to love someone just because they're blood. You're allowed to make choices. Family is family because you love them, you don't love them because they're family. It's okay.”

 

Aisling is repetitive now; silly, as if anything she's said will start to mean more to him because she says it twice. It doesn't. It doesn't.

 

Aisling squeezes his hand. “I loved my mother,” she says quietly. “I hated her, but I loved her too, because love and hate aren't mutually exclusive.”

 

Alright, he has better things to be doing than sitting here listening to this – but Aisling is ardent.

 

“It's okay if you didn't love that sibling you killed, because you didn't have to, and it's okay if you did, because you have every right to, and either way it's okay to miss them!”

 

Lucifer stops. Everything. Moving, breathing, thinking.

 

He does miss Gabriel. He really, really, does, and he can't regret killing Gabriel because Gabriel'd left him no choice no choice at all but he misses his brother so deeply and it's by his hand that Gabriel is gone – gone –

 

He must have loved Gabriel, he must have loved more than just Michael, he's never been sure – not since before he changed his name – but now he is, he loved Gabriel and he took that love and used it as a weapon. It's too much, too soon, and Lucifer is bawling again, huge sobs that shake the chair and send the tea and tissues crashing down to the ground where they spill out in a liquefying mess.

 

Lucifer is barely aware that Aisling carefully stows the chocolate chip cookies far away from the chair to be safe. She pauses then, indecision painting streaks of discomfort and uncertainty across her face, but she goes through with it. There isn't space for two on Lucifer's rickety chair, and she's not brave or stupid enough to clamber onto his lap, which would send all the wrong signals anyway. Aisling secures her arms around his knees and pulls firmly until he crumples off his seat.

 

He's a wreck, crying on the dirty floor. She lifts from his armpits and tugs and twitches and resettles various and sundry appendages. She stops when she's holding him like she saw Saibh's mother hold her when Aisling came in the dark that night. Like Aisling can protect him from the world forever, she can kiss booboos better, she can chase away monsters.

 

She rubs his back and rocks him back and forth, the way she always wanted to be. He snorts and snuffles and cries about the sibling he'd killed, and she croons a lullaby between murmuring 'hush,'es and soothing 'I'm here,'s. Her song is fragmented and broken, pieces cobbled together far poorer than an elf might offer, stolen from old memories of others' mothers, one verse bleeding into the next's chorus; she sings like she speaks, high-pitched, emotive, irritating; but it's a lullaby and he's crying.

 

“ _Can ye sew cushions, an can ye sew sheets? Hush a bye bairnie, hush a bye dear; does wee lammie ken that yer daddy's no here? The wild wind is ravin', but ye dinna care … hush-a-baa-baa, me treasure dear; dey'll naebody hurt thee whin mam is near … come away, o human child! To the waters and the wild, with a faery, hand in hand, for the world's more full of weeping than you can understand … the water is wide, I can't cross over, and neither have I wings to fly; but love grows old, and waxes cold, and fades away like morning dew; I know not how I sink or swim … my bonnie lies over the sea; last night as I lay on my pillow, I dreamed that my bonnie was dead; my bonnie lies over the ocean, oh bring back my bonnie to me … ”_

 

He sobs; then he coughs, hiccoughs; then he sniffles, rubs his face; then it's over and he's done.

 

It's been two hours.

 

Lucifer is aware now. His head feels stuffy but calm and clearing. Perhaps that is just what he needed to get back into the swing of things. He only needed to sit down and really let it all out. Aisling has been wonderful.

 

He's still wrapped up in Aisling's tender embrace, and it's nothing at all like wings. His own are – it's a bad feather day, it has been since he fought Michael. That's the best way to put it. Without using words like 'scars,' or 'melted,' or 'pus.' He doesn't think about them much now. Thinking about necrotic flesh doesn't breathe health back into it. Out of mind, out of sight. He doesn't let them out much now. Human vessels can usually handle it, yes, but Lucifer has been having such trouble securing Sam Winchester's acquiescence that he just cannot justify needless risk.

 

Sam Winchester is him, him as he might have been if born to humans, him as he might have been in some other life, him as he never wants to be, because demon blood, well, it's an abomination.

 

Which reminds him, he's wrapped up in the arms of a demon right now; and yes, in some ways she's family because he created demons, so despite the fact that, unlike humans, demons are not all related, in some ways she's like his great-great-great-etcetera-granddaughter. Not that he considers Lilith a daughter. That would be disturbing. She's more like a painting he spilled ink all over and called finished in an art-nouveau, avant-garde, formalist, expressionist, abstract, individual way.

 

It was much easier to handle his own psyche in Hell. Being unable to actually speak to anyone meant he wasn't expected to, and thus never had to worry about when he lost his train of thought (he'd been doing so well! He'd had a purpose, and a plan, and it was all going so well! But this infernal catharsis had thrown him off; well, he's not going to let that stand! He will rise again) or being interrupted by anyone in his head. Which of course only holds him.

 

He's being held.

 

Lucifer shakes his skull until he can feel the brain within smack eack side and deform slightly. Bruises made of fresh deadly blood start forming. Intracranial hemorrhage. The distraction of healing that centers him again. He needs at least two trains of thought or the station has issues with signage.

 

He takes stock. His chair has toppled over in the commotion. The tissues have entirely been consumed by the evaporating beverage, now spread, darkly pooled, about the floor. The cookies, he notes with little interest, are set next to the door. Aisling's sprawled on the floor, curled around him, as he is around her; his arms are looped around her neck, her collarbone is wet.

 

He just spent two hours crying in Aisling's arms.

 

That is unacceptable.

 

He looks down at Aisling. She's served him faithfully, if not well. She's always tried, he knows that. She made him tea and cookies. She sang for him. She knew him well enough to predict this breakdown. She knows him too well.

 

Aisling blinks up at him. She smiles at his clear face, his dry eyes.

 

He snaps her neck and smothers her instinctive attempt to flee the body. It's like chloroform. Less acid burns, more death. Morphine overdose. She's gone quick and easy.

 

He makes sure it doesn't hurt.

 

|||||

 

Lucifer stands up and discovers he's still clutching Gabriel's sword somehow. It's inexplicable, improbable, that his Grace could keep track of the sword while he was so out of it. It's a mi – no. No, it isn't.

 

Lucifer stares down at the body on the floor and the body in his hands. They both are, as much as either is. Gabriel's sword is not the whole of his remains and yet it is; Aisling's latest vessel is not the sum of her corpse but it must be.

 

Aisling, no, Aisling's vessel, is slumped on the ground. The pose she lies in is awkward. In life she never would have settled into that. Her back bends over at an odd angle and the curve of her spine makes a roadbump in the room. Gabriel's vessel had had a leg bent up and an ashy wing outline tossed atop a hotel buffet table.

 

He's tired of killing people he doesn't plan to. If only they wouldn't get in his way …

 

This is what war costs him. It's worth it. Nobody's ever asked, but if they did, he'd say it's worth it.

 

What are a few bodies here and there, when he's fighting for freedom?

 

When he's fighting for the liberation of a species subjugated and enslaved by an abusive parent?

 

They're nothing. This is what the war has cost and mortgage payments will only rise with the steep interest rate he borrowed at.

 

Gabriel's sword is in his hand. He removes the sheath, lays the blade out on his palms. He closes his fists tight around the edges, and they shy away from injuring him. With Gabriel's consciousness departed, the sword acts as Gabriel's Grace did without direction: it would never harm the brother Gabriel had never wanted to hurt.

 

Lucifer opens his hands. The sword hasn't changed. They all look like this, in vessels; the short silver gleams its default shape. One sword is as another is as another.

 

Lucifer looks at it and wonders, was it worth it, Gabriel? He can't ask, but he wonders nonetheless, was dying worth it to save that girl? One girl? Lucifer wouldn't have damaged the Winchesters, not then, he knows how to be patient; he has practice.

 

Well, this hasn't ended yet and if he has anything to say about it, it won't end well, but at this second all's well.

 

That's enough. He's wasted plenty of time on emotional baggage that he should have just checked at the gate, but now with only his drug-free carry-on he's ready for this flight to leave. He looks at the sword one minute more, just one last minute more.

 

Then Lucifer lets go of the sword. He has a world to raze.

 

The sword's gone. No more magic pacemaker for it. He picks his way through the mess strewn on the floor. These may not be great shoes but there's no occasion for tracking muck all around and leaving an easy trail to follow.

 

At the door he pauses. There's a white wax paper bundle sitting by the door post. It's the uneaten chocolate chip cookies.

 

Aisling made those cookies. She'll never make cookies again.

 

He takes the cookies with him on his way out.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you had fun reading; please tell me about it, either way.
> 
> For anyone who read the first part in this series -- the next piece is in progress, and it will be Michael. (Or maybe Gabriel. It was supposed to be Gabriel, but Michael really wants to talk, so...)


End file.
